A new Android Trojan that specializes in stealing banking information by intercepting SMS messages has been making the rounds. Trojan appears to be targeting Chinese Android users as many types of malware that came before it, at least for the moment.
The Trojan’s forte is sniffing out message having to do with banking and emailing those captured SMS messages to itself. In both cases the Trojan sends the information to a hardcoded Chinese email service and a hardcoded Chinese phone number. The Trojan’s SMS communication works both ways, because it can receive commands from the command and control server via SMS.
Read moreFile integrity monitoring, patching, key defence. Criminals are ransoming database backups, after compromising web applications to change databases' encryption settings. Security consultancy claimed the attacks start with an attack on a web site that yeilds acess to a database server.
Once in, attackers change the encryption settings used by the database and store the key on an HTTPS server somewhere, an operation that apparently escapes some admins' attention. To pull off the attack, the attackers remove the key from the remote server, at which point the website operator notices their site is down.
Read moreSmall and big firms working online have to be prepared for ‘unprecedented levels of attempted fraud’ this month, say payments experts. Payments business Worldpay claims instances of fraud could rocket by as much as 80 per cent in February as hackers capitalise on customer data harvested during the Christmas shopping period.
But it should be mentioned that small firms are the biggest target for hackers. Virtually all breaches happen online, the rest being at point of sale. The costs of being targeted can run to tens of thousands of pounds, with an investigation costing £11,250 on average and attracting a penalty of at least £8,000. There is also the cost of lost goods and damage to reputation.
Read moreThe move towards mobile banking and mobile financial services has created many benefits for both financial institutions and their customers.
However, in an attempt to better illustrate the risks in this area, RiskIQ has released data on the number of suspicious mobile apps being downloaded by Android users looking for banking and finance-related services. Branded malicious mobile apps come in the form of compromised versions of official mobile apps or mobile apps wrapped in branding. They imitate functionality consistent with a given brand and have been pre-installed with malware or data-stealing permissions.
Read moreResearchers have uncovered a new variant of the infamous Zeus Trojan. It’s called Chthonic, a reference to spirits and deities from the underworld in Greek mythology, and it’s targeting 150 banks and 20 payment systems in 15 countries.
Zeus, as its name suggests, is the king of banking malware. It first emerged in 2007 and has been wreaking havoc on online bank accounts ever since. In 2011, its developers threw in the towel and posted its source code for all to see. It may seem as though this would be the end for Zeus, but, in fact, the opposite is true.
Read moreICANN is investigating a recent intrusion into our systems. We believe a "spear phishing" attack was initiated in late November 2014. It involved email messages that were crafted to appear to come from our own domain being sent to members of our staff. The attack resulted in the compromise of the email credentials of several ICANN staff members.
The attacker obtained administrative access to all files in the CZDS. This included copies of the zone files in the system, as well as information entered by users such as name, postal address, email address, fax and telephone numbers, username, and password.
Read moreUnkillable nasty still climbs out of the grave to this day. The Asprox botnet was responsible for about a lot of attack sessions recorded during October 2014, impacting different organisations.
The Asprox malware family is continuing to plague businesses, despite multiple attempts to disrupt its infrastructure. The Asprox botnet, which first surfaced around six years ago in 2008, has been linked to phishing scam messages as well as the distribution of secondary malware infections. The zombie network also acts as a platform for hack attacks. Asprox spreads through vulnerable websites, using SQL injections attacks to plant malicious code.
Read moreA new report found that a majority of bank account takeovers by cyberthieves over the past decade might have been thwarted had affected institutions known to look for and block transactions coming through Tor, a global communications network that helps users maintain anonymity by obfuscating their true location online.
The findings come in a non-public report obtained by KrebsOnSecurity that was produced by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Treasury Department bureau responsible for collecting and analyzing data about financial transactions to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing and other financial crimes.
Read moreOnline advertising is a tough business, as only half of the display ads are actually seen – if you even take the definition of half the ad pixels in sight for one second. But guess what? It gets lots worse.
According to a new research marketers have a billion-dollar bot problem. Nearly one-fourth of all video ads are served to bots, while some display ads are bot-infected. Global advertisers could lose a lot of money to bots in 2015, if current fraud rates continue. That means all the advertisers are wasting money on robotic audience share. It's not just the open ad exchanges that have a bot problem; the report also notes that premium publishers can be infected as well.
Read moreA new kind of point-of-sale malware similar to that which struck Target is being sold in underground markets. The malware was found on VirusTotal, a website where people can submit malware samples to see if one of several dozen security applications detects it.
It had also been advertised on an underground carding website, where people buy and sell stolen payment card data. Retailers across the USA have been hit hard by malware that scans the volatile memory of computers connected to point-of-sale systems, which handle card payments. It appears to share some of the same source code as Dexter and other characteristics of Chewbacca.
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