Malware

November 3, 2017

One of the breakthroughs of the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iran’s nuclear program was its use of legitimate digital certificates, which cryptographically vouched for the trustworthiness of the software’s publisher. Following its discovery in 2010, researchers went on to find the technique was used in a handful of other malware samples both with ties to ...

October 31, 2017

2017 has been the year of ransomware. While the file-encrypting malware has existed in one form or another for almost three decades, over the last few months it’s developed from a cybersecurity concern to a public menace. The term even made it into the dictionary in September. In particular, 2017 had its own summer of ransomware: while incidents ...

October 27, 2017

The Ramnit worm (W32.Ramnit) was an aggressively propagated Windows-based worm that first appeared around 2010. Its creator used an extensive range of propagation techniques to ensure that it spread quickly and widely. Once it infects a computer, it copies itself to all attached and removable drives. Crucially, it also searches for and infects .exe, .dll, ...

October 27, 2017

England’s National Health Service (NHS) could have avoided the ransomware hack that crippled its systems in May, according to a government report. “Basic IT security” was all that was required to prevent the “unsophisticated” WannaCry attack, which affected more than a third of NHS organizations, said the National Audit Office (NAO). The full scale of the incident saw over 19,000 ...

October 26, 2017

Despite early reports that there was no use of National Security Agency-developed exploits in this week’s crypto-ransomware outbreak, research released by Cisco Talos suggests that the ransomware worm known as “Bad Rabbit” did in fact use a stolen Equation Group exploit  revealed by Shadowbrokers to spread across victims’ networks. The attackers used EternalRomance, an exploit that bypasses security over ...

October 26, 2017

Attackers behind the pervasive banking Trojan Ursnif have made Japan one of their top targets, delivering the malware via spam campaigns that began last month. For years, Ursnif (or Gozi) has targeted Japan along with North America, Europe and Australia. But according to a recent IBM X-Force analysis of the malware, hackers have stepped up Ursnif ...

October 24, 2017

A new widespread ransomware attack is spreading like wildfire around Europe and has already affected over 200 major organisations, primarily in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Germany, in the past few hours. Dubbed “Bad Rabbit,” is reportedly a new Petya-like targeted ransomware attack against corporate networks, demanding 0.05 bitcoin (~ $285) as ransom from victims to unlock ...

October 20, 2017

Google is offering security researchers a $1,000 (£760) bounty if they can successfully hack apps on its Play Store and help fix them. Bug bounty programmes are a popular way for companies to reward hackers who find vulnerabilities in their software and disclose them to developers so they can be fixed rather than exploited. The focus on ...

October 17, 2017

Hacking ATM is now easier than ever before. Usually, hackers exploit hardware and software vulnerabilities to hack ATMs and force them to spit out cash, but now anyone can simply buy a malware to steal millions in cash from ATMs. Hackers are selling ready-made ATM malware on an underground hacking forum that anybody can simply buy for ...

October 16, 2017

FinSpy—the infamous surveillance malware is back and infecting high-profile targets using a new Adobe Flash zero-day exploit delivered through Microsoft Office documents. Security researchers from Kaspersky Labs have discovered a new zero-day remote code execution vulnerability in Adobe Flash, which was being actively exploited in the wild by a group of advanced persistent threat actors, known as BlackOasis. The critical ...