Constant Improvement — For Malware

In the on-going battle between malware makers and security vendors, the malware makers are taking a page from the book of legitimate developers and are using QA to test their products to be sure the products are effective.  Unfortunately, in this case effective means effective in evading the tools designed to protect systems. Dancho Danchev, writing in the Webroot Threat Blog in a posting entitled,  How cybercriminals apply Quality Assurance (QA) to their malware campaigns before launching them, describes how online cyber crime tools that have been used by hackers since 2009.  This is a screenshot from one of these online [...]

2017-01-07T17:35:19-05:00June 14th, 2013|SP Guard, spear phishing|

China Read McCain’s Mail – Before He Sent It

NBC News is reporting that the 2008 Presidential Campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain were spied upon by the Chinese. Click To Watch NBC News Report NBC is reporting that the espionage conducted against the campaigns of the two candidates was far more extensive than was disclosed to the public at the time. In one incident that caused concern among U.S. intelligence officials, the Chinese hackers appeared to have gotten access to private correspondence between McCain, then the GOP presidential candidate, and Ma Ying-jeou, the newly elected president of Taiwan. On July 25, 2008, McCain had signed [...]

2017-01-07T17:35:19-05:00June 13th, 2013|Phishing, SP Guard|

NetTraveler Isn’t Traveler

For fans of intercollegiate football, the name Traveler means one thing -- the USC Trojans mascot. Traveler NetTraveler is a horse of a different color -- a trojan horse that is focused on stealing information. Kaspersky just reported its discovery of NetTraveler, malware that establishes Command & Control (C&C) servers on victim's machines for the purpose of stealing information. NetTraveler has been quietly stealing information since 2004. Kaspersky calculates that there are over 22 gigabytes of stolen data on the NetTraveler C&C servers. Kaspersky observed that 22 gigabytes is only a small fraction of what was stolen because Kaspersky [...]

2017-01-07T17:35:19-05:00June 5th, 2013|SP Guard, spear phishing|