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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

In Brief Two International hackers, Aleksandr Andreevich Panin and Hamza Bendelladj, have been sentenced to a combined 24 years and 6 months in prison for their roles in developing and distributing SpyEye banking trojan, a powerful botnet similar to the infamous ZeuS malware. Both hackers were charged with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from banking institutions worldwide. Masterminds behind the development and distribution of the infamous " SpyEye " botnet have finally been sentenced to a combined total of 24 years and 6 months in prison. Aleksandr Andreevich Panin and Hamza Bendelladj have been sentenced for their roles in developing and distributing SpyEye malware that is said to have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to the financial sector, the U.S. Justice Department said  on Wednesday. SpyEye, a successor to the notorious Zeus banking malware , has affected financial institutions since 2009. Once infected, the malware connects t

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Russian Group of Hackers reportedly cracked into the Kazan-based Energobank and messed up with the Ruble-Dollar exchange rates. In Feb 2015, a hacking group, known by the name METEL , successfully breached into the Russian Regional Bank for just 14 minutes and caused the exchange rate to fluctuate between 55 and 66 rubles per dollar, which finally resulted in the increment of Ruble's value. Here's how they did it: According to Russian security firm, Group-IB, who investigated the incident, the Metel Hacking group infected Kazan-based Energobank with a virus known as the Corkow Trojan and placed more than $500 million in orders at non-market rates. " This is the first documented attack using this virus, and it has the potential to do much more damage ," Dmitry Volkov, the head of Group-IB's cyber intelligence department, told Bloomberg . The hackers had taken the advantage of Spear Phishing Technique, which appears to come from a legit source. A single click

The world's most notorious financial hacking operation disrupted by Russian authorities in November, when they raided the offices associated with a Moscow-based film and production company named 25th Floor . According to the Russian authorities, 25th Floor was allegedly involved in distributing the notorious password-stealing malware known as Dyre Banking Trojan . Malware Costs Hundreds of $$$ Millions in Losses The Dyre banking Trojan was typically distributed via spam campaigns and was responsible for over hundreds of millions of dollars in losses at banking and financial institutions, including Bank of America Corp, PayPal, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Dyre , also known as Dyreza , first appeared in July 2014 and updated to target Windows 10 systems and its newest Edge browser. However, Dyre has not been in use since the November raid, according to cyber security experts, who said the raid represents Russia's biggest effort up to date in cracking down

The Dridex banking trojan that is widely being used by cyber criminals to distribute malware onto users' machines has now been found distributing a security software. A portion of the Dridex banking Trojan botnet may have been hacked or compromised by an unknown Whitehat Hacker, who replaced the malicious links with  Avira Antivirus  installers. What is Dridex Banking Trojan? How it Works? Dridex malware – also known as Bugat and Cridex – is believed to have been created by cyber criminals in Eastern Europe in an effort to harvest online banking details. Even after a high-profile takedown operation in late 2015, the Dridex botnet seems to be active again. The Dridex virus typically distributes itself through spam messages or emails that include malicious attachments, most often a Microsoft Office file or Word document integrated with malicious macros. Once the malicious file has been clicked, the macros download and install the main payload of the virus – th

Security firm Trend Micro has identified a 20-year-old Brazilian college student responsible for developing and distributing over 100 Banking Trojans selling each for around US$300 . Known online as ' Lordfenix ', ' Hacker's Son ' and ' Filho de Hacker ', the computer science student first began his career by posting in forums, asking for programming help for a Trojan he was developing, researchers said. Developed More than 100 Trojans However, Lordfenix has "grown quite confident in his skills" and began developing and distributing malware tailored to pilfer financial information since at least 2013. "Based on our research, Lordfenix has created more than 100 different banking Trojans , not including his other malicious tools, since April 2013," Trend Micro says . "With each Trojan costing around R$1,000 (roughly $320), this young cybercriminal channeled his talent in programming into a lucrative, illegal venture." Trend Mi

The Law enforcement agencies from six different European countries have taken down a major Ukrainian-based cyber criminals gang suspected of developing, distributing and deploying Zeus and SpyEye banking malware . According to the report on the official website of Europol, authorities have arrested five suspects between June 18 and 19. All the five suspects are the members of an alleged gang that has been accused of infecting tens of thousands of computers worldwide with malware and banking Trojans. The alleged cybercriminal group distributed and used Zeus and SpyEye malware to steal money from several major banks in Europe and outside. The gang constantly modified its malware Trojans to defeat the security protocols of banks and used " mule networks " to launder money. "On the underground digital forums, they actively traded stolen credentials, compromised bank account information and malware," Europol said in a statement on Thursday, "

It seems like the world has declared war against the Cyber Criminals. In a recent update, we reported that FBI is offering $3 Million in Reward for the arrest of GameOver Zeus botnet mastermind, and meanwhile British cyber-police has taken down widely-spread RAMNIT botnet . The National Crime Agency (NCA) in a joint operation with Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and law enforcement agencies from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom has taken down the Ramnit "botnet", which has infected over 3.2 million computers worldwide, including 33,000 in the UK. Alike GameOver Zeus, RAMNIT is also a ' botnet ' - a network of zombie computers which operate under criminal control for malicious purposes like spreading viruses, sending out spam containing malicious links, and carrying out distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) in order to bring down target websites. RAMNIT believes to spread malware via trustworthy links se

Despite increased online and mobile banking security, banks are more often being targeted by hackers. A hacker group has infiltrated a number of banks and financial institutions in several countries, stealing hundreds of Millions of dollars in possibly the biggest bank heist the world has ever seen. According to a report published by the New York Times on Saturday, hackers have stolen as much as $1 Billion from more than 100 banks and other financial companies in almost 30 nations, making it " the most sophisticated attack the world has seen to date. " In late 2013 , banks in Russia, Japan, Europe, the United States and other countries fell victim to a massive, sophisticated malware hack that allowed the hackers to spy on bank officials in order to mimic their behavior, according to an upcoming report by Kaspersky Labs received by the NY Times. CARBANAK BANKING MALWARE IN THE WILD In order to infect bank staffs, the hacker group sent malicious emails to hun

Cybercriminals are known to take advantage of everything that captures public attention in order to spread malware, and the recently launched web client of the most popular WhatsApp messaging application seems to be their next target. Last month, the messaging giant WhatsApp, with 700 million users worldwide, finally launched its web client to the public. The feature is called " WhatsApp Web ," which gives its users the ability to read and send messages directly from their web browsers. FAKE WHATSAPP WEB SPREADING BANKING TROJANS However, malicious hackers have taken the advantage of the latest WhatsApp Web and have started fooling users all over the world with fake downloads masquerading as a desktop variant of the WhatsApp mobile application. Security researchers at Kaspersky Labs have spotted a seemingly genuine WhatsApp Web for Windows in spam campaign available for fake download that actually spreads financial malware Trojans to the systems worldwide.

A new Spam email campaign making the rounds in Germany are delivering a new variant of a powerful banking malware , a financial threat designed to steal users' online banking credentials, according to security researchers from Microsoft. The malware, identified as Emotet , was first spotted last June by security vendors at Trend Micro. The most standout features of Emotet is its network sniffing ability , which enables it to capture data sent over secured HTTPS connections by hooking into eight network APIs, according to Trend Micro. Microsoft has been monitoring a new variant of Emotet banking malware , Trojan:Win32/Emotet.C , since November last year. This new variant was sent out as part of a spam email campaign that peaked in November. Emotet has been distributed through spam messages, which either contain a link to a website hosting the malware or a PDF document icon that is actually the malware. HeungSoo Kang of Microsoft's Malware Protection Center identifi

" The Interview ", the controversial North Korean-baiting film which appeared to be the root cause of the cyber mishap occurred at Sony Pictures Entertainment that threatened terror attack at theaters showing the movie, now threatens to expose users of Android phones to a malware attack. Since its release, everyone is talking about "The Interview" — the Seth Rogen and James Franco-starring comedy centered around a TV host and his producer assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Because cybercriminals are known to take advantage of major events where there is a high level of public interest, The Interview became their target. In a joint investigation, Security researchers of McAfee and Technische Universität Darmstadt and the Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt (CASED) has discovered an Android app claiming to download 'The Interview' comedy on their smartphone devices actually infects users' devices with banking trojan in

The source code for the smallest but sophisticated banking Trojan Tinba has been leaked through an online post in an underground forum, which make it available for anyone who knows where to look for free malware generation tools. The files posted on the closed russian underground forum turned out to be the source code of Tinba version1 , which was discovered around mid-2012 and they say it is the original, privately sold version of the crimeware kit that infected thousands of computers in Turkey. Tinba , also known as Zusy, is a tiny but deadly banking Trojan that comprises just 20 Kilobytes of code that gives it ability to slip past detection by some antivirus engines and uses a number of well-word man-in-the-browser tricks in an attempt to defeat two-factor authentication. It infects systems without any advanced encryption or packing and has capability to hook into browsers and steal login data and sniff on network traffic. Last week, researchers at CSIS in Denmark

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 that t

After Whatsapp, The Chinese WeChat is the second most popular messaging application and currently being targeted by cybercriminals to spread a new Banking Trojan in order to steal the financial information from its users. WeChat is a famous mobile instant messaging app developed by Chinese company Tencent, with more than 355 million users across the world. The app offers people to chit-chat with their friends and relatives, and also allows users to make payments for goods and services on WeChat. The Payment feature of the app requires users' bank account details to their messenger account and this is what tempting cybercriminals to develop new and more sophisticated banking Trojans and malwares. The security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have uncovered such banking Trojan, dubbed as Banker.AndroidOS.Basti.a, which looks exactly like the legitimate WeChat application for Android devices. While installation, it also requires the same permissions such as to access the Int

iBanking is nothing but a mobile banking Trojan app which impersonates itself as a so-called ' Security App ' for Android devices and distributed through HTML injection attacks on banking sites, in order to deceive its victims. Recently, its source code has been leaked online through an underground forum that gave the opportunities to a larger number of cyber criminals to launch attacks using this kind of ready-made mobile malware. The malicious iBanking app installed on victims' phone has capabilities to spy on user's communications. The bot allows an attacker to spoof SMS, redirect calls to any pre-defined phone number, capture audio using the device's microphone and steal other confidential data like call history log and the phone book contacts. According to new report from ESET security researchers, now this iBanking Trojan ( Android/Spy.Agent.AF ) is targeting Facebook users by tricking them to download a malware application. The malware uses

A new dangerous variant of ZeuS Banking Trojan has been identified by Comodo AV labs which is signed by stolen Digital Certificate which belongs to Microsoft Developer to avoid detection from Web browsers and anti-virus systems. Every Windows PC in the world is set to accept software " signed " with Microsoft's digital certificates of authenticity, an extremely sensitive cryptography seal. Cyber Criminals somehow managed to hack valid Microsoft digital certificate, used it to trick users and admins into trusting the file. Since the executable is digitally signed by the Microsoft developer no antivirus tool could find it as malicious. Digitally signed malware received a lot of media attention last year. Reportedly, more than 200,000 unique malware binaries were discovered in past two years signed with valid digital signatures. A Comodo User submitted a sample of the malicious software that attempts to trick user by masquerading itself as file of Intern

Today, when we come across various malware, exploit kits and botnets that are in the wild, we think about an effective Antivirus solution or a Security Patch, but the most effective solution is always " The arrest of malware authors and culprits who are involved in the development of Malware. " Tilon has been an active malware family that was spotted first time in 2012, was specially designed to filch money from online bank accounts, that earlier various researchers found to be the new version of Silon , is none other than the SpyEye2 banking Trojan , according to researchers at security firm  Delft Fox-IT . Tilon  a.k.a  SpyEye2 is the sophisticated version of SpyEye Trojan . Majority functional part of the malware is same as of the SpyEye banking Trojan that was developed by a 24-year-old Russian hacker ' Aleksandr Andreevich Panin ' or also known as  Gribodemon , who was arrested in July 2013. ' SpyEye ', infected more than 1.4 million Computers