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In late 2013, Security Researchers identified thousands of Linux systems around the world infected with the OpenSSH b ackdoor trojan and  credential stealer  named Linux/Ebury ,  that allows  unauthorized access of an affected computer to the remote attackers. Antivirus Firm ESET's Reseacher team has been tracking and  investigating the operation behind Linux/Ebury and today team  uncovers the details [ Report PDF ] of a massive,  sophisticated and organized  malware campaign called ' Operation Windigo ', infected more than 500,000 computers and 25,000 dedicated servers. ' We discovered an infrastructure used for malicious activities that is all hosted on compromised servers. We were also able to find a link between different malware components such as Linux/Cdorked, Perl/Calfbot and Win32/Glupteba.M and realized they are all operated by the same group. '  ESET reported. Malware used in Operation Windigo: Linux/Ebury –  an OpenSSH backdoor use

We use our Smartphone devices to do almost everything, from Internet Banking to Sharing private files and at the same pace, the mobile malware sector is also growing. The number of variants of malicious software aimed at mobile devices has reportedly risen about 185% in less than a year.  Security researchers have observed a growth in the numbers of computer malware families starting to use TOR-based communications, but recently the Security Researchers at anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab have spotted  the world's first Tor-Based Malware for Android Operating system. The Android Malware dubbed as ' Backdoor. AndroidOS .Torec.a ', using Tor hidden service protocol for stealth communication with Command-and-Control servers. Researchers detected that the Trojan is running from .Onion Tor domain and working on the functionality of an open source Tor client for Android mobile devices, called ' Orbot ', thus eliminating the threat of the botnet being de

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

After the massive data breaches at U.S retailers Target and Neiman Marcus in which financial credentials of more than 110 million and 1.1 million customers were compromised respectively, shows that the Point of Sale (POS) system has become a new target for the cyber criminals. Despite the BlackPOS malware of Point of Sale (POS) system that comes out as the major cause of these data breaches, malware writers are upgrading and developing more Trojans to target POS system. In December, the security researchers at anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab discovered a Tor-based banking trojan , dubbed " ChewBacca ", that was initially categorized as a Financial trojan, but recently security researchers at RSA have uncovered that 'ChewBacca' is also capable of stealing credit card details from point of sale systems. ' ChewBacca ', a relatively new and private Trojan, used in the 11 countries as a POS malware is behind the electronic theft. ChewBacca communicat

After Financial and Banking Malwares, Ransomware has become the first choice of money motivated cybercriminals. A new Ransomware Trojan known as ICEPOL has been one of those widespread malware which has been successfully installed approximately 267,786 times worldwide and 42,400 in the USA alone over a five month period, analyzed by the security firm BitDefender . The ICEPOL Trojan categorized as Ransomware that locks your PC and demand for a ransom amount to unlock it. The Malware was using a previously known vulnerability in Java software i.e. CVE-2013-0422 to infect the systems. The malware threatened the user with accusations of illegal piracy or ' porn-related activity ' and requires money for exemption from punishment that pretends to be from the 'police'. " The ICEPOL Trojan extorted victims who downloaded it by sending them a message in any one of 25 languages purporting to be from police accusing them of downloading copyrighted material

I hope you all still remember the famous and powerful Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called ' Dark Comet ', developed by a French computer geek ' Jean-Pierre Lesueur ', also known as ' DarkCoderSc '. However, He had closed the Dark Comet project, when the Syrian government found to be using it to track down and to spy on their people. After that  DarkCoderSc  started working under a new banner ' Phrozen Software ' to develop many new security softwares and penetration testing tools. Just yesterday, Jean-Pierre and his team-mate Fabio Pinto  from French University, have released a new tool called ' Rakabulle ', a file binder with some cool features for penetration testers and malware researchers. File binder is an application that allows a user to bind multiple files together, resulting in a single executable file. When you execute that single application, all previous merged files will be extracted to a temporary location, and will be exe

The Flashback Trojan, the most sophisticated piece of malware that infected over 600,000 Apple's Macs systems back in April, 2012 is still alive and has infected about 22,000 machines recently, according to the researchers from Intego . For a refresh, Flashback Trojan was first discovered in September 2011, basically a trojan horse that uses a social engineering to trick users into installing a malicious Flash player package. Once installed, the Flashback malware injects a code into that web browser and other applications like Skype to harvest passwords and other information from those program's users. The Trojan targets a known vulnerability in Java on Mac OS X systems. The system gets infected after the user redirects to a compromised website, where a malicious javascript code to load the exploit with Java applets. Then an executable file is saved on the local machine, which is used to download and run malicious code from a remote location. It took Apple months to recogni

Researchers at Trusteer   spotted a new banking malware program on the underground Russian cybercrime market , that communicates with attackers over the I2P anonymity network is for sale on underground Russian cybercrime forums. Dubbed ' i2Ninja ', malware has most of the features found in other financial malware including the ability to perform HTML injections and form grabbing in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. i2Ninja can also steal FTP and e-mail credentials. It also has a PokerGrabber module feature that targets poker sites. The traffic between the malware and the command server cannot be easily blocked by intrusion prevention systems or firewalls because it's encrypted and transmitting over the Invisible Internet Project (I2P). Everything from delivering configuration updates to receiving stolen data and sending commands is done via the encrypted I2P channels. I2P communication can make it much harder for security researchers to find and take

Earlier this year, in the month of July it was first discovered that 99% of Android devices are vulnerable to a flaw called " Android Master Key vulnerability " that allow hackers to modify any legitimate and digitally signed application in order to transform it into a Trojan program that can be used to steal data or take control of the device.  The vulnerability was also responsibly disclosed to Google back in February by Bluebox and but the company did not fix the issue even with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Later, Google has also modified its Play Store's app entry process so that apps that have been modified using such exploit are blocked and can no longer be distributed via Play. Then after a few days, in the last week of July this year,  Android Security Squad , the China -based group also uncovered a second Android master key vulnerability similar to the first one. Security researcher  Jay Freeman has  discovered  yet another Master Key vulnerability in A

A very profitable line for mobile malware developers is Android Banking Trojans, which infect phones and steal passwords and other data when victims log onto their online bank accounts. One recent trend is Android malware that attacks users in specific countries, such as European Countries, Brazil and India.  The Antivirus software maker Malwarebytes noticed that a new threat distributed via file sharing sites and alternative markets in the last few months, targets Korean users. Dubbed as ' Android/Trojan . Bank . Wroba ', malware disguises itself as the Google Play Store app and run as a service in the background to monitor events.  " This enables it to capture incoming SMS, monitor installed apps and communicate with a remote server. " According to the researcher, after installation - malware lookup for existence of targeted Banking applications on the device, remove them and download a malicious version to replace. " The malicious v

A team of researchers from the U.S. and Europe has developed a Hardware Trojan , which is an undetectable to many techniques, raising the question on need of proper hardware qualification.  They  released a paper on stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans, showing how integrated circuits used in computers, military equipment and other critical systems can be maliciously compromised during the manufacturing process. " In this paper we propose an extremely stealthy approach for implementing hardware Trojans below the gate level, and we evaluate their impact on the security of the target device. Instead of adding additional circuitry to the target design, we insert our hardware Trojans by changing the dopant polarity of existing transistors. " states the paper abstract. The Scientists devised two such backdoors they said adversaries could feasibly build into processors to surreptitiously bypass cryptographic protections provided by the computer running the chips

Russian Security Firm Kaspersky Lab has revealed that it has been following a sustained attack on South Korea by hackers seemingly based in North Korea.,  This new Cyber Espionage campaign dubbed "Kimsuky"  has targeted several South Korean think tanks. R esearchers believe the Kimsuky malware is most likely delivered via spear-phishing e-mails  and used multiple Dropbox email accounts "It's interesting that the drop box mail accounts iop110112@hotmail.com and rsh1213@hotmail.com are registered with the following "kim" names: kimsukyang and "Kim asdfa " The Kaspersky researchers revealed that the operation presents distinctive characteristics in its execution and logistics. The investigation started after the team of experts detected an unsophisticated spy program that communicated with it control server via a public e-mail server, an approach followed by too many amateur malware authors. Victims download a Trojan dropper which is used to download additional malwa

Security firm ESET has discovered  a new and effective banking trojan , targeting online banking users and designed to beat the mobile multi-factor authentication systems. Hesperbot detected as Win32/Spy.Hesperbot is very identical to the infamous Zeus and SpyEye Banking Malwares and infects users in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Trojan has functionalities such as keystroke logging , creation of screenshots and video capture, and setting up a remote proxy. The attackers aim to obtain login credentials giving them access to the victim's bank account and getting them to install a mobile component of the malware on their Symbian, Blackberry or Android phone. Some other advanced tricks are also included in this banking Trojan, such as creating a hidden VNC server on the infected system and can do network traffic interception with HTML injection capabilities. So far, the Trojan hasn't spread too far. The campaign was first detec

Excitement continues .. Rockstar Games schedule the release of latest The Grand Theft Auto series, GTA 5  on September 17, but Cyber Criminals has already released a fake version of GTA 5 contains malware on torrent networks. Romanian security firm BitDefender issued warning that GTA V hasn't been leaked, and during installation you will be asked to complete a survey and send off a text message to gain the serial number. You will then be charged €1 per day on your phone bill and will be infected by a virus. The PC version has yet to be announced, so trying to install it on your PC is a ridiculous idea; but that seems to be what a lot of people are doing. " The survey opens in a web browser and, therefore, is able to perform a geographic redirect to the web page that corresponds to the area you are located in, " said, Bitdefender Senior E-Threat Analyst Bogdan Botezatu. This malware is a generic Trojan Trojan.GenericKDV.1134859 , which can steal user

What would you do if a European Cybercrime Agency locked your PC until you paid a fine? A new Police Ransomware  family dubbed Trojan : HTML/Browlock by F-secure Antivirus firm, known as Browlock , which spreads by tricking unsuspecting web surfers into believing the police are after them. Ransomware is malware that, when installed on a device, can be locked down from remote locations by cyber criminals . Usually, ransomware appears to be an official warning telling the user that the computer has to be locked because it showed illegal activities and payment is necessary to access files. Ransomware is a global phenomenon, but the criminals have learned to localize and customize their software to make the threat seem scarier so that victims act quickly before they have time to think. Researchers said they are tracking this Malware from a while ago and now crooks behind the malware ate targeting users from some new countries including the United States, Canada and th

OpenX, a leading provider of digital and mobile advertising technology has accordingly served backdoors that are injected into the Code and allows hackers to control over your Web server. German tech site the Heise notified Germany's computer emergency response team (CERT) this week about the OpenX Ad Server (2.8.10) backdoor, allowing an attacker to execute any PHP code via the "eval" function  and could have provided attackers full access to their web sites. The OpenX team has confirmed the breach  and OpenX senior application security engineer Nick Soracco said that two files in the binary distribution of 2.8.10 had been replaced with modified files that contained a remote code execution vulnerability . The attack code is written in PHP but is hidden in a JavaScript file that is part of a video player plugin ( vastServeVideoPlayer ) in the OpenX distribution. This vulnerability only applies to the free downloadable open source product, OpenX Source.

What if hackers could take an existing legitimate app or update with a valid digital signature, and modify it in order to use it as a malicious Trojan to access everything on your Android phone or tablet? Last week, researchers from Bluebox Security announced that the Android operating system has been vulnerable to hackers for the past four years, allowing them to modify or manipulate any legitimate application and enabling them to transform it into a Trojan programme. The bug hasn't, so far, been spotted being exploited in the wild, but technical details and a proof-of-concept exploit have been published for a recently announced publicly by Pau Oliva Fora, a mobile security engineer at security firm ViaForensics. Jeff Forristal of Bluebox security stated that the security hole as been around since at least Android 1.6, and it could affect all Android devices i.e. around 900 million devices could be affected by hackers. CyanogenMod , a popular open source d

Almost all Android handsets are  vulnerable to a  flaw that could allow hackers to seize control of a device to make calls, send texts, or build a mobile botnet , has been uncovered by Bluebox Security .i.e almost 900 million Android devices globally. Or simply, The Flaw allow hackers to modify any legitimate and digitally signed application in order to transform it into a Trojan program that can be used to steal data or take control of the OS. When an application is installed and a sandbox is created for it, Android records the application's digital signature and all subsequent updates for that application need to match its signature in order to verify that they came from the same author and anything without the signature certificate won't install or run on a user's device. The vulnerability has existed since at least Android 1.6, which means that it potentially affects any Android device released during the last four years.  Samsung 's flagship Galaxy S4 has a

On June 19, Browser maker Opera admitted that, it discovered an attack on its internal network infrastructure and windows users may have been tricked into installing a Trojan signed with a stolen Opera certificate. " On June 19th we uncovered, halted and contained a targeted attack on our internal network infrastructure. Our systems have been cleaned and there is no evidence of any user data being compromised." "We are working with the relevant authorities to investigate its source and any potential further extent. We will let you know if there are any developments ." said in a post on the Opera Security Blog. Code signing certificates are used to cryptographically verify that a piece of software comes from its purported publisher. It is possible that a few thousand Windows users, who were using Opera between 01.00 and 01.36 UTC on June 19th, may automatically have received and installed the malicious software. Opera plans to roll out a new version of its

The notorious Zeus Trojan , a family of banking malware known for stealing passwords and draining the accounts of its victims, has steadily increased in recent months. The malware family itself is frequently updated with mechanisms designed to evade detection by antivirus and network security appliances. Trend Micro experts spotted another new variant of  ZBOT Malware which is capable of spreading  itself automatically via USB Flash Drives or removable drives. According to report , this particular ZBOT variant arrives through a malicious PDF file disguised as a sales invoice document and when user opens this file using Adobe Reader, it triggers an exploit . Malware also has an auto update module, so that it can download and run an updated copy of itself. To self propagate, it creates a hidden folder with a copy of itself inside the USB drive with a shortcut pointing to the hidden ZBOT copy. Another variant of ZeuS #Malware spotted, with new feature of spreading itself automati

A new piece of sophisticated Android malware has been discovered by security researchers at Kaspersky Labs . Dubbed as Backdoor . AndroidOS . Obad . a , it is the most sophisticated piece of Android malware ever seen. It exploits multiple vulnerabilities , blocks uninstall attempts, attempts to gain root access, and can execute a host of remote commands. It include complex obfuscation techniques that complicated analysis of the code, and the use of a previously unknown vulnerability in Android that allowed it to take control of and maintain a foothold on infected Android devices . There are two previously unknown Android vulnerabilities exploited by Obad . It can gain administrator privileges, making it virtually impossible for a user to delete it off a device. Another flaw in the Android OS relates to the processing of the AndroidManifest.xml file. This file exists in every Android application and is used to describe the application's structure, define its laun