- Inside Malware Markets: Current Trends and Competitive Forces
July 30, 2019
Regardless of location, legitimacy, or legality, markets of all kinds act in accordance with a prevailing set of forces. Made famous by business management guru Michael Porter, his eponymous Five Forces generally dictate how markets will operate — that includes markets for malware. Porter’s Five Forces Rivalry Among Existing Competitors Bargaining Power of Suppliers Bargaining Power of Buyers Threat of ...
- Unique Monokle Android Spyware Self-Signs Certificates
July 24, 2019
A never-before-publicized mobile spy tool, a mobile surveillanceware remote access trojan (RAT) for Android called Monokle, has been spotted using novel techniques to exfiltrate data. According to the Lookout researchers who discovered Monokle in the wild, the malware has the ability to self-sign trusted certificates to intercept encrypted SSL traffic. It can also record a phone’s ...
- StrongPity APT Returns with Retooled Spyware
July 17, 2019
The APT group behind the sophisticated malware known as StrongPity (a.k.a. Promethium) has mounted a fresh spyware campaign that is still ongoing as of July 2019. The group has retooled with new malware to control compromised machines, according to researchers. “The new malware samples have been unreported and generally appear to ...
- Why Cities Are a Low-Hanging Fruit For Ransomware
July 15, 2019
Ransomware attacks against local governments and cities are repeatedly making headlines, with crippling results on city operations and budgets. Last month, the Florida city of Riviera Beach paid hackers $600,000 after being hit by a ransomware attack that downed its computer systems for three weeks. In 2018, several Atlanta city systems were crippled after a ransomware attack extorted ...
- Turla APT Returns with New Malware, Anti-Censorship Angle
July 15, 2019
The Turla APT has revamped its arsenal in 2019, creating new weapons and tools for targeting government entities. It’s now using booby-trapped anti-internet censorship software as an initial infection vector, suggesting Turla is going after dissident or other civil-society targets. The Russian-speaking actors believed behind Turla named the dropper “Topinambour,” which is another word for the ...
- New Miori Variant Uses Unique Protocol to Communicate with C&C
July 10, 2019
We first detailed a new Mirai variant called Miori in a report late last year after finding the malware spreading via a ThinkPHP Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability. It has recently reappeared bearing a notable difference in the way it communicates with its command-and-control (C&C) server. This Miori variant departs from the usual binary-based protocol and uses ...
- Anubis Android Malware Returns with Over 17,000 Samples
July 8, 2019
The 2018 mobile threat landscape had banking trojans that diversified their tactics and techniques to evade detection and further monetize their malware — and in the case of the Anubis Android malware, retooled for other malicious activities. Anubis underwent several changes since it first emerged, from being used for cyberespionage to being retooled as a banking malware, combining information ...
- Latest Spam Campaigns from TA505 Now Using New Malware Tools Gelup and FlowerPippi
July 4, 2019
Since our last research on TA505, we have observed new activity from the group that involves campaigns targeting different countries over the last few weeks. We found them targeting countries in the Middle East such as United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as other countries such as India, Japan, Argentina, the Philippines, and South Korea. This ...
- Sodin ransomware exploits Windows vulnerability and processor architecture
July 3, 2019
When Sodin (also known as Sodinokibi and REvil) appeared in the first half of 2019, it immediately caught our attention for distributing itself through an Oracle Weblogic vulnerability and carrying out attacks on MSP providers. In a detailed analysis, we discovered that it also exploits the CVE-2018-8453 vulnerability to elevate privileges in Windows (rare among ransomware), and uses legitimate processor ...
- A Quick and Efficient Method For Locating the main () function of Linux ELF Malware Variants
July 2, 2019
Linux is a family of open source operating systems (OS) commonly used to run internet of things (IoT) devices and web servers. The prevalence of the OS, as expected, has turned it into a valuable target for cybercriminals casting wide nets to reach more potential victims. In the past few years, Linux systems have been susceptible ...