Threat Lab

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...

Spamvertised bogus online casino themed emails serving W32/Casonline

Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising hundreds of thousands of emails enticing end and corporate users into clicking on links leading to bogus online casinos requiring the installation of an executable file.

This is the second bogus casino themed campaign I’ve intercepted in recent months, and the third time when I profile the distribution and infection vectors of W32/Casonline.

More details:

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Spamvertised ‘Your UPS delivery tracking’ emails serving client-side exploits and malware

Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising millions of emails impersonating United Parcel Service (UPS) in an attempt to trick end and corporate users into clicking on exploits and malware serving links found in the malicious emails. What exploits are they using? How widespread is the campaign? Is it an isolated incident, or is the campaign linked to more malicious activity?

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‘Create a Cartoon of You” ads serving MyWebSearch toolbar

On their way to attract new users, adware providers and online marketers often come up with new and creative ideas tailored to average Internet users. These often include free screensavers, browser plugins, toolbars, and that’s just for starters.

In this post, we’ll profile the market proposition of one of these online advertisers, previously known as a vendor of adware toolbars, and discuss what has changed over the years.

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Spamvertised ‘Your Paypal Ebay.com payment’ emails serving client-side exploits and malware

Remember the ‘Your Amazon.com order confirmation’ client-side exploits and malware serving campaign which I profiled earlier this week?

It appears that the gang behind it is back with another campaign, this time impersonating PayPal. For the time being, another round consisting of millions of malicious emails is circulating in the wild, enticing end and corporate users into clicking on malicious links found in the emails.

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FakeAV for Android! There you are!

By Nathan Collier

Every super hero has an arch nemesis. For a lot of Threat Researchers, including myself, Rogue Security Products, or better known as FakeAV, is theirs. Back in the day when I was primarily a PC malware fighter, FakeAV was a prevalent threat that was always coming up with new ways to infect users nearly every other day. I knew it was only a matter of time that the same malware authors would turn mobile. I am afraid those days are upon us. How could I ever forget such an identifiable logo:

“Android Security Suite Premium”… yeah, right!  This spy which is being called Android.FakeSecSuit   retrieves incoming sms messages, extracts the phone number and message, and then sends the stolen info off:

As you can see in the GET command from the PCAP, highlighted in blue is the phone number and message I sent to my test phone now being sent off to a site.

Now that the developers of the popular FakeAV malware have entered into the mobile world expect to to see a lot more variations of this… and if they follow the same pattern as they did in the PC world, I mean A LOT! We are seeing it in Torrents and/or alternative markets. Remember, when downloading Android apps choose them wisely and download  from a trusted source. Check reviews, research the developer and verify  permissions requested before downloading. And of course, scan with Webroot SecureAnywhere Mobile.

Cybercriminals populate Scribd with bogus adult content, spread malware using Comodo Backup

On their way to convert legitimate traffic into malware-infected hosts using web malware exploitation kits, cybercriminals have been actively experimenting with multiple traffic acquisition techniques over the past couple of years. From malvertising (the process of displaying malicious ads), to compromised high-trafficked web sites, to blackhat SEO (search engine optimization), the tools in their arsenal have been systematically maturing to become today’s sophisticated traffic acquisition platforms delivering millions of unique visits from across the world, to the cybercriminals behind the campaigns.

What are some of the latest campaigns currently circulating in the wild? How are cybercriminals monetizing the hijacked traffic? Are they basically redirecting to the landing page of an affiliate network, earning revenue in the process, or are they serving malicious software to unsuspecting and gullible end and corporate users?

Let’s find out by profiling a currently active blackhat SEO (search engine optimization) campaign at the popular document sharing web site Scribd, currently using double monetization of the anticipated traffic, namely, redirecting users to a dating affiliate network, and serving malware in between.

More details:

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Seen Ad Pop-up’s in Your Mobile Browser Lately?

by Armando Orozco

Today, one of our Webroot SecureAnywhere for Android users reported seeing ad redirections while browsing on his Android device. As we began investigating, we noticed that there were a lot of other mobile users seeing the same thing – yes, on their iPhones as well! We were also able to reproduce the behavior on our devices.

This appears to be a clever Ad redirection using JavaScript. The pop-ups are survey offers for free electronics like iPads and iPhones. The users are asked to complete a survey, at the end of which their email address and phone number is also recorded. I know we’ve all seen these pop-ups before, but we’re not used to seeing them in our mobile world.

These pop-ups are not related to any apps you may have installed – they are a result of how the web page was written. Web developers use “alert()” function in JavaScript, which displays a message box requesting response from a user. The advertisers utilize this method to display their ads.

We are still investigating this issue and hope to track down the advertisers responsible. There does not appear to be anything malicious about these pop-ups for the time being, but we are sure malware authors will employ this tactic soon. With the rash of Rogue Applications and the recent discovery of a Rogue AV app (blog coming soon), we can see how this method could be exploited with malicious intent. Again, these are not platform or application-specific behaviors.

To remedy these pop-ups, you can disable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thanks to JohnDeth of our Webroot Community for bringing this to our attention.