Industry Intel

Girl Scouts and OpenText empower future leaders of tomorrow with cyber resilience

The transition to a digital-first world enables us to connect, work and live in a realm where information is available at our fingertips. The children of today will be working in an environment of tomorrow that is shaped by hyperconnectivity. Operating in this...

World Backup Day reminds us all just how precious our data is

Think of all the important files sitting on your computer right now. If your computer crashed tomorrow, would you be able to retrieve your important files? Would your business suffer as a result? As more and more of our daily activities incorporate digital and online...

3 Reasons We Forget Small & Midsized Businesses are Major Targets for Ransomware

The ransomware attacks that make headlines and steer conversations among cybersecurity professionals usually involve major ransoms, huge corporations and notorious hacking groups. Kia Motors, Accenture, Acer, JBS…these companies were some of the largest to be...

How Ransomware Sneaks In

Ransomware has officially made the mainstream. Dramatic headlines announce the latest attacks and news outlets highlight the staggeringly high ransoms businesses pay to retrieve their stolen data. And it’s no wonder why – ransomware attacks are on the rise and the...

An MSP and SMB guide to disaster preparation, recovery and remediation

Introduction It’s important for a business to be prepared with an exercised business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan plan before its hit with ransomware so that it can resume operations as quickly as possible. Key steps and solutions should be followed...

Podcast: Cyber resilience in a remote work world

The global pandemic that began to send us packing from our offices in March of last year upended our established way of working overnight. We’re still feeling the effects. Many office workers have yet to return to the office in the volumes they worked in pre-pandemic....

5 Tips to get Better Efficacy out of Your IT Security Stack

If you’re an admin, service provider, security executive, or are otherwise affiliated with the world of IT solutions, then you know that one of the biggest challenges to overcome is efficacy. Especially in terms of cybersecurity, efficacy is something of an amorphous...

How Cryptocurrency and Cybercrime Trends Influence One Another

Typically, when cryptocurrency values change, one would expect to see changes in crypto-related cybercrime. In particular, trends in Bitcoin values tend to be the bellwether you can use to predict how other currencies’ values will shift, and there are usually...

Yet another Bitcoin accepting E-shop offering access to thousands of hacked PCs spotted in the wild

Oct 16, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

The never-ending supply of access to compromised/hacked PCs — the direct result of the general availability of DIY/cracked/leaked malware/botnet generating tools — continues to grow in terms of the number and variety of such type of underground market propositions. With more cybercriminals entering this lucrative market segment, on their way to apply well proven and efficient monetization schemes to these hacked PCs, cybercrime-friendly affiliate networks naturally capitalize on the momentum, ensuring a win-win business process for the participants and the actual owners of the network.

In this post, I’ll highlight yet another newly launched such E-shop, currently possessing access to over 30,000 malware-infected hosts.

Spamvertised T-Mobile ‘Picture ID Type:MMS” themed emails lead to malware

Oct 14, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

The cybercriminals behind last week’s profiled fake T-Mobile themed email campaign have resumed operations, and have just spamvertised another round of tens of thousands of malicious emails impersonating the company, in order to trick its customers into executing the malicious attachment, which in this case is once again supposedly a legitimate MMS notification message.

Novice cyberciminals offer commercial access to five mini botnets

Oct 11, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

With the increased public availability of leaked/cracked DIY malware/botnet generating tools, cybercriminals continue practically generating new botnets on the fly, in order to monetize the process by offering access to these very same botnets at a later stage in the botnet generation process. In addition to monetizing the actual process of setting up and hosting the botnet’s C&C (command and control) servers, novice cybercriminals continue selling direct access to their newly generated botnets, empowering other novice cybercriminals with the foundations for further disseminating and later on monetizing other pieces of malicious software, part of their own arsenal of fraudulent/malicious tools.

Let’s discuss one such sample service run by novice cybercriminals, once again targeting cybercriminals, that’s selling direct access to mini botnets generated using what appears to be a cracked version of a popular DIY malware/botnet generating kit, and emphasize on the service’s potential in the broader context of today’s highly professionalized cybercrime ecosystem.

ThreatVlog Episode 8: DNS hijack through phishing and the Adobe breach

Oct 10, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

In this episode of the ThreatVlog, Marcus talks about the DNS hijack that took down a slew of popular websites, including WhatsApp, AVG, and Avira. These accounts were all compromised through one simple phishing scheme going after the Network Solutions accounts. Marcus also discusses the basics of the Adobe hack.

http://youtu.be/QIPX4r3NygQ

Compromised Turkish Government Web site leads to malware

Oct 10, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Our sensors just picked up an interesting Web site infection, this time affecting a Web server belonging to the Turkish government, where the cybercriminals behind the campaign have uploaded a malware-serving fake ‘DivX plug-in Required!” Facebook-themed Web page. Once socially engineered users execute the malware variant, their PCs automatically join the botnet operated by the cybercriminals behind the campaign.

Fake ‘You have missed emails’ GMail themed emails lead to pharmaceutical scams

Oct 9, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Pharmaceutical scammers are currently mass mailing tens of thousands of fake emails, impersonating Google’s GMail in an attempt to trick its users into clicking on the links found in the spamvertised emails. Once users click on them, they’re automatically exposed to counterfeit pharmaceutical items, with the scammers behind the campaign attempting to capitalize on the ‘impulsive purchase’ type of social engineering tactic typical for this kind of campaign.

Sample screenshot of the spamvertised email:

Sample screenshot of the landing pharmacautical scams page:

Landing URL: shirazrx.com – 85.95.236.188 – Email: ganzhorn@shirazrx.com

The following pharmaceutical scam domains also respond to the same IP:
asqrtplc.com
pharmlevitrafitch.com
myprescriptionhealth.com
viagrasequester.com
rxjeanstra.at
medoverdose.at
rxtreatments.ru

The following pharmaceutical scam domains are also known to have responded to the same IP (85.95.236.188):
albertapharm.com
albertapharm.net
antacid.fatwelnessdiet.com
anticlockwise.medwelopioid.com
antiquarianism.medwelopioid.com
assignment.healthcareviagrabiotech.com
canadaprescriptioninc.at
carburettors.opioidsalemeds.com
debars.dentalcarepharmacy.com
deliquescent.homemedicalrx.com
dipoles.fatdietpharm.com
drughealthcareprescription.com
drugstoreabortion.com
drugstorepharmetro.com
heads.fatpillsdiet.com
hebalk.ru
herbalviagrasildenafil.com
inflammatory.patientsprescriptionmedical.com
levitrachrome.at
levitrapillkorsinsky.com

This isn’t the first, and definitely not the last time pharmaceutical scammers brand-jack reputable brands in order to trick users into clicking on the links found in the fake emails, as we’ve already seen them brand-jack Facebook’s Notification System, YouTube, as well as the non-existent Google Pharmacy. Thanks to the (natural) existence of affiliate networks for pharmaceutical items, we expect that users will continue falling victim to these pseudo-bargain deals, fueling the the growth of the cybercrime economy and the need for more cybersecurity awareness.

Our advice? Never bargain with your health, spot the scam and report it.

Newly launched VDS-based cybercrime-friendly hosting provider helps facilitate fraudulent/malicious online activity

Oct 8, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Realizing the market segment potential of bulletproof hosting services in a post-Russian Business Network (RBN) world — although it can be easily argued that as long as its operators are at large they will remain in business — cybercriminals continue supplying the cybercrime ecosystem with market-relevant propositions. It empowers anyone with the ability to host fraudulent and malicious content online. A newly launched Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) type of bulletproof hosting vendor is pitching itself to prospective cybercriminals, offering them hosting services for spam, malware, brute-forcing tools, blackhat SEO tools, C&C (command and control) servers, exploit kits and warez. In addition to offering the “standard cybercrime-friendly” bulletproof hosting package, the vendor is also excelling in terms of the hardware it relies on for providing the infrastructure to its customers.

Let’s take a peek inside the infrastructure ‘facility’, and discuss the vendor’s business model in the over-populated market segment for bulletproof hosting services, currently available to prospective cybercriminals.

Cybercriminals offer spam-friendly SMTP servers for rent – part two

Oct 7, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

We continue to spot new cybercrime ecosystem propositions for spam-ready, cybercrime-friendly SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) targeting QA (Quality Assurance) aware cybercriminals looking to gain access to dedicated mail servers with clean IP reputation, ensuring that their campaigns will reach the recipient’s Inbox. Relying on ‘in-house’ built infrastructure or direct outsourcing to bulletproof hosting providers, these services continue empowering prospective customers with managed, popular spam software compatible services, potentially exposing millions of users to fraudulent or malicious email campaigns.

Let’s discuss yet another managed service offering spam-ready SMTP servers, and connect it to malicious campaigns that have directly interacted with the same infrastructure it’s currently hosted on, indicating that it’s already “in business”.

New cybercrime-friendly iFrames-based E-shop for traffic spotted in the wild

Oct 4, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Thanks to the free, commercial availability of mass Web site hacking tools, in combination with hundreds of thousands of misconfigured and unpatched Web sites, blogs and forums currently susceptible to exploitation, cybercriminals are successfully monetizing the compromise process. They are setting up iFrame based traffic E-shops and offering access to hijacked legitimate traffic to be later on converted to malware-infected hosts.

Despite the fact that the iFrame traffic E-shop that I’ll discuss in this post is pitching itself as a “legitimate traffic service”, it’s also explicitly emphasizing on the fact that iFrame based traffic is perfectly suitable to be used for Web malware exploitation kits. Let’s take a closer look at the actual (international) underground market ad, and discuss the relevance of these E-shops in today’s modern cybercrime ecosystem.

Commercially available Blackhat SEO enabled multi-third-party product licenses empowered VPSs spotted in the wild

Oct 4, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

Standardization is the cybercrime ecosystem’s efficiency-oriented mentality to the general business ‘threat’ posed by inefficiencies and lack of near real-time capitalization on (fraudulent/malicious) business opportunities. Ever since the first (public) discovery of managed spam appliances back in 2007, it has become evident that cybercriminals are no strangers to basic market penetration/market growth/market development business concepts. Whether it’s the template-ization of malware-serving sites, money mule recruitment, spamming or blackhat SEO, this efficiency-oriented mentality can be observed in virtually each and every market segment of the ecosystem.

In this post, I’ll discuss a recent example of standardization, in particular, a blackhat SEO friendly VPS (Virtual Private Server) that comes with over a dozen multi-blackhat-seo-friendly product licenses from third-party products integrated. It empowers potential customers new to this unethical and potentially fraudulent/malicious practice with everything they need to hijack legitimate traffic from major search engines internationally.

DDoS for hire vendor ‘vertically integrates’ starts offering TDoS attack capabilities

Oct 3, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

DDoS for hire has always been an inseparable part of the portfolio of services offered by the cybercrime ecosystem. With DDoS extortion continuing to go largely under-reported, throughout the last couple of years — mainly due to the inefficiencies in the business model — the practice also matured into a ‘value-added’ service offered to cybercriminals who’d do their best to distract the attention of a financial institution they’re about to (virtually) rob.

Operating online — under both private and public form — since 2008, the DDoS for hire service that I’ll discuss in the this post is not just offering DDoS attack and Anti-DDoS protection capabilities to potential customers, but also, is ‘vertically integrating’ within the ecosystem by starting to offer TDoS (Telephony Denial of Service Attack) services to prospective customers.

‘T-Mobile MMS message has arrived’ themed emails lead to malware

Oct 2, 2013 | Industry Intel, Threat Lab

A circulating malicious spam campaign attempts to trick T-Mobile customers into thinking that they’ve received a password-protected MMS. However, once gullible and socially engineered users execute the malicious attachment, they automatically compromise the confidentiality and integrity of their PCs, allowing the cybercriminals behind the campaign to gain complete control of their PCs.