Trojan | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The US-CERT has released a joint technical alert from the DHS and the FBI, warning about two newly identified malware being used by the prolific North Korean APT hacking group known as Hidden Cobra. Hidden Cobra, often known as Lazarus Group and Guardians of Peace, is believed to be backed by the North Korean government and known to launch attacks against media organizations, aerospace, financial and critical infrastructure sectors across the world. The group was even associated with the WannaCry ransomware menace that last year shut down hospitals and businesses worldwide. It is reportedly also linked to the 2014 Sony Pictures hack , as well as the SWIFT Banking attack in 2016. Now, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI have uncovered two new pieces of malware that Hidden Cobra has been using since at least 2009 to target companies working in the media, aerospace, financial, and critical infrastructure sectors across the world. The malware Hidden Cobra is...

Security researchers have discovered a custom-built piece of malware that's wreaking havoc in Asia for past several months and is capable of performing nasty tasks, like password stealing, bitcoin mining, and providing hackers complete remote access to compromised systems. Dubbed Operation PZChao , the attack campaign discovered by the security researchers at Bitdefender have been targeting organizations in the government, technology, education, and telecommunications sectors in Asia and the United States. Researchers believe nature, infrastructure, and payloads, including variants of the Gh0stRAT trojan, used in the PZChao attacks are reminiscent of the notorious Chinese hacker group— Iron Tiger . However, this campaign has evolved its payloads to drop trojan, conduct cyber espionage and mine Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The PZChao campaign is attacking targets across Asia and the U.S. by using similar attack tactics as of Iron Tiger, which, according to the researchers, si...

Are you using Linux or Mac OS? If you think your system is not prone to viruses, then you should read this. Wide-range of cybercriminals are now using a new piece of 'undetectable' spying malware that targets Windows, macOS, Solaris and Linux systems. Just last week we published a detailed article on the report from EFF/Lookout that revealed a new advanced persistent threat (APT) group, called Dark Caracal , engaged in global mobile espionage campaigns. Although the report revealed about the group's successful large-scale hacking operations against mobile phones rather than computers, it also shed light on a new piece of cross-platform malware called CrossRAT (version 0.1), which is believed to be developed by, or for, the Dark Caracal group. CrossRAT is a cross-platform remote access Trojan that can target all four popular desktop operating systems, Windows, Solaris, Linux, and macOS, enabling remote attackers to manipulate the file system, take screenshots, ru...

Refuting allegations that its anti-virus product helped Russian spies steal classified files from an NSA employee's laptop, Kaspersky Lab has released more findings that suggest the computer in question may have been infected with malware. Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab on Thursday published the results of its own internal investigation claiming the NSA worker who took classified documents home had a personal home computer overwhelmed with malware. According to the latest Kaspersky report, the telemetry data its antivirus collected from the NSA staffer's home computer contained large amounts of malware files which acted as a backdoor to the PC. The report also provided more details about the malicious backdoor that infected the NSA worker's computer when he installed a pirated version of Microsoft Office 2013 .ISO containing the Mokes backdoor, also known as Smoke Loader. Backdoor On NSA Worker's PC May Have Helped Other Hackers Steal Classi...

A few months back we reported how opening a simple MS Word file could compromise your computer using a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Office . The Microsoft Office remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2017-0199) resided in the Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) interface for which a patch was issued in April this year, but threat actors are still abusing the flaw through the different mediums. Security researchers have spotted a new malware campaign that is leveraging the same exploit, but for the first time, hidden behind a specially crafted PowerPoint (PPSX) Presentation file. According to the researchers at Trend Micro, who spotted the malware campaign, the targeted attack starts with a convincing spear-phishing email attachment, purportedly from a cable manufacturing provider and mainly targets companies involved in the electronics manufacturing industry. Researchers believe this attack involves the use of a sender address disguised as a legitimate ema...

Own an Android smartphone? Hackers can secretly install malicious apps, games, and pop-up adverts on your smartphone remotely in order to make large sums of money. Security researchers at Cheetah Mobile have uncovered one of the world's largest and most prolific Trojan families, infecting millions of Android devices around the world. Dubbed Hummer , the notorious mobile trojan stealthily installs malicious apps, games, or even porn apps onto victim's phones and yields its creators more than $500,000 (£375,252) on a daily basis. First discovered in 2014 by Cheetah Mobile, Hummer gained traction in early 2016 when the Trojan family was infecting "nearly 1.4 Million devices daily at its peak" with 63,000 infections occurring daily in China, according to researchers at Cheetah Mobile Security Research Lab. "This Trojan continually pops up ads on victims' phones, which is extremely annoying," researchers wrote in a blog post. "It also pushe...

Russian authorities have arrested a gang of 50 hackers suspected of stealing more than 1.7 Billion Rubles ( over US$25 Million ) from banks and other financial institutions in the country since 2011. The same criminal gang had tried to steal a further 2.273 Billion Roubles by issuing false payment instructions, but that were blocked. The group allegedly used a Trojan called " Lurk " to set up a network of bots on infected computers to carry out the attacks, according to Russia's FSB ( Federal Security Service ). Initially identified in 2012, Lurk is a "fileless" Trojan that runs in RAM and has mostly been used for collecting banking credentials, especially for banks in Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation. The criminal gang allegedly seeded some of Russia's most popular websites with Lurk. Once infected, the malware downloaded more software modules, allowing the hackers to gain remote access to victims' computers. The hackers then stole...

An Arkansas lawyer representing three police whistleblowers has claimed that the law enforcement officials at the Fort Smith Police Department (FSPD) tried to infect his computer with Trojan viruses in order to spy on their legal opponents. What's the issue? A lawyer Matthew Campbell of the Pinnacle Law Firm in North Little Rock is representing Don Paul Bales, Rick Entmeier, and Wendall Sampson, current and former officers of the Fort Smith Police Department in the lawsuit since January 2014. The three whistleblowers exposed some frauds within the corrupt department, and, therefore, the police have illegally investigated them. " Since July 2013, the plaintiffs have been the target of nearly two dozen various investigations , Campbell told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. " [This range] from accusations that they misspent FSPD funds to allegations that they were impugning the FSPD on Facebook. " What happened? Campbell provided a blank ha...

Security researchers have uncovered a malvertising campaign used to distribute malware to visitors of The Huffington Post website, as well as several other sites, through malicious advertisements served over the AOL  advertising  network . At the end of last year, Cyphort Labs, security firm specialized in detecting malware threats, came across some malicious advertisements that were being served on the United States and Canadian versions of the popular news website The Huffington Post . The malicious advertisements eventually redirected visitors of the news website to other websites hosting exploit kits, in order to attack victims' computers and install malware. Researchers discovered that the malvertising campaign originates with ads being served by AOL's Advertising.com network. Once clicked, users are redirected through a series of redirects, some of which used HTTPS encrypted connections, to a page that served either the Neutrino Exploit Kit or the Sweet...

A month after the FBI and Europol took down the GameOver Zeus botnet by seizing servers and disrupting the botnet's operation, security researchers have unearthed a new variant of malware based explicitly on the same Gameover ZeuS that compromised users' computers and collectively formed a massive botnet. GAMEOVER ZEUS TROJAN The massive botnet, essentially a collection of zombie computers, specifically was designed to steal banking passwords with the capability to perform Denial of Service (DoS) attacks on banks and other financial institutions in order to deny legitimate users access to the site, so that the thefts kept hidden from the users. As a result of it, Gameover ZeuS' developers have stolen more than $100 million from banks, businesses and consumers worldwide. NEW GAMEOVER ZEUS TROJAN On Thursday, security researchers at the security firm Malcovery came across a series of new spam campaigns that were distributing a piece of malware based on the Gameover Zeus code which ...

The hike in the banking malware this year is no doubt almost double compared to the previous one, and so in the techniques of malware authors. Until now, we have seen banking Trojans affecting devices and steal users' financial credentials in order to run them out of their money. But nowadays, malware authors are adopting more sophisticated techniques in an effort to target as many victims as possible. BANKING MALWARE WITH NETWORK SNIFFING Security researchers from the Anti-virus firm Trend Micro have discovered a new variant of banking malware that not only steals users' information from the device it has infected but, has ability to " sniff " network activity in an effort to compromise the devices of same network users as well. The banking malware, dubbed as EMOTET spreads rapidly through spammed emails that masquerade itself as a bank transfers and shipping invoices. The spammed email comes along with an attached link that users easily click, considering th...

A new and relatively rare Zeus Trojan  program has found which is totally different from other banking Trojans and has capability to secretly steal data from forms, login credentials and files from the victim as well as can create fake web pages and take screenshots of victim's computer. Researchers at RSA Security's FraudAction team have discovered this new and critical threat, dubbed as ' Pandemiya ', which is being offered to the cyber criminals in underground forums as an alternative to the infamous Zeus Trojan and its many variants, that is widely used by most of the cyber-criminals for years to steal banking information from consumers and companies. The source code of the Zeus banking Trojan is available on the underground forums from past few years, which lead malware developers to design more sophisticated variants of Zeus Trojan such as Citadel, Ice IX and Gameover Zeus . But, Pandemiya is something by far the most isolated and dangerous piece of malware ...

In past few months, the malware developers are more focusing on proliferating and upgrading malicious malwares to target Point-of-Sale (POS) machines. Due to the lack of concern and security measures, point-of-sale (POS) systems have become an attractive target for cybercriminals and malware writers. BlackPOS malware caused massive data breaches in various US retailers targeting POS machines and the largest one is TARGET data breach occurred during the last Christmas holidays. The third-largest U.S. Retailer in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen, used to pay for purchases at its 1500 stores nationwide in the U.S. Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store were also targeted involving the heist of possibly 110 million Credit-Debit cards, and personal information. BlackPOS malware was embedded in point-of-sale (POS) equipment at the checkout counters to collect secure data as the credit cards were swiped during transactions. Now the latest one is the ' Nemanj...

When it comes to crime, whether it's an online or offline, FBI doesn't spare anyone. According to the French media reports and various announcements on underground forums by hacking groups, the FBI has started a large-scale operation of International raids with the help of local law enforcement authorities to arrest a particular group of cyber criminals and Hackers. The FBI has targeted the customers of a popular Remote Administration Tool (RAT) called ' blackshades ', which allows them to connect and manage thousands of remotely infected computers over the Internet. WHAT IS BLACKSHADES RAT?? ' Blackshades ' is a remote administration tool (RAT) which allows an attacker to control several clients from around the world.  Blackshades  malware   is fully equipped with Drive-by attacks, Java exploits, keylogger and it allows an attacker to steal usernames and passwords for email and Web services, instant messaging applications, FTP clients and lot...

If you came across any suspicious Facebook message with ' LOL ' text or a fake Image file send by any of your Facebook friend, avoid clicking it. A Trojan horse is currently circulating in wild through the Facebook social network that could steal your Facebook account data and Credentials. Security researchers spotted  this malware campaign first in the beginning of March this year, where the Trojan spreads itself through the Facebook's Messenger service (inbox) by messaging a victim pretending to be one of their friends saying "LOL" with a zip file attached, which appears to be a photo, named " IMG_xxxx.zip ". In Past two weeks, many of our readers informed us that they received similar ZIP files from their trusted Facebook friends. The Hacker News team also noticed that despite after several warnings in media, once again the malware campaign just goes viral like any other video scam , but this time directly through users' inbox-to-inbox. HOW DOES...

Before Ransomware, Click fraud was one of the popular and efficient ways for cybercriminals to make money and with the explosive growth in the size of the online threats it is still making its way on the Internet. " Click-Fraud " is the practice of deceptively clicking on search ads with the intention of either increasing third-party website revenues or exhausting an advertiser's budget. Besides the search results, we all have seen advertisements placed in the search engine's WebPage. If the visitor clicks the Ad, the advertiser has to pay a fee to the search engine. A problem that has arisen with pay-per-click is results in Click-Fraud. The term " fraud " is used because in either case, the advertiser is paying for a click without receiving any true value. Of course, the number of clicks has to be large enough in order to gain a considerable amount of money, and in order to do that an attacker can use an automated script or malicious program to simulate multiple clicks b...