Malware

Mobile threats are becoming more complex, and more difficult to deal with as more and more devices become connected, a former vice-president of security trade body ISACA has warned.

Microsoft has released an emergency fix for a vulnerability in all versions of Internet Explorer – warning that targeted attacks are already attempting to exploit it.

“Hardware Trojans” could be baked invisibly into circuits by attackers, allowing them to grab secret keys from computer components without fear of detection – even by advanced inspection systems using optical microscopes.

Six Nigerian men have gone on trial today in London for an alleged phishing scam where job offers at London’s exclusive Harrods department store were used as “bait”.

A new variant on a family of Mac OS X malware which targets Tibetan activists has been found in the wild and shared on the Virus Total website, where security researchers show off new “finds”.

In this 3rd Hesperbot blog post we’ll look at the most intriguing part of the malware – the way it handles network traffic interception.

Win32/Spy.Hesperbot is a new banking trojan that has been targeting online banking users in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Portugal and the United Kingdom. For more information about its malware spreading campaigns and victims, refer to our first blog post. In this post we’ll cover the technical details of the malware, including the overall architecture, as well as the mobile component.

A new and effective banking trojan has been discovered targeting online banking users in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Portugal and the United Kingdom. It uses very credible-looking phishing-like campaigns, related to trustworthy organizations, to lure victims into running the malware.

A few months ago on this blog I described PowerLoader functionality – including an interesting way for privilege escalation into the explorer.exe system process. The leaked PowerLoader code is also used in other malware families.

We look at malware delivered by a campaign that has infected thousands of websites around the world – and the various control flow obfuscation techniques that make its analysis as interesting as it is challenging.

Orbit Downloader by Innoshock is a popular browser add-on often used to download embedded videos from sites such as YouTube. But the popular add-on has disturbing hidden functions.

In this blog post we confirm that the Avatar rootkit continues to thrive in the wild, and disclose some new information about its kernel-mode self-defense tricks. We continue our research into this malware family.

Apps with a hidden “dark side” could sneak past Apple’s approval process, according to researchers at Georgia Tech. The researchers proved this theory using a malicious app which was approved and downloaded via App Store in March this year.

Two video plug-ins for YouTube hijack users visits to the site and insert extra adverts – some of which are being hijacked by “malvertisers”, sending users to fake adverts which attempt to infect their PCs.

Philips Hue lighting system is vulnerable to attacks which can cause a “perpetual blackout” in the homes of users, according to a security researcher. The Hue wireless system – on sale in Apple store – controls wireless LED light bulbs in the home via a wireless bridge, and can be controlled by iOS and Android

The Tor Project has advised users of the anonymous browser to stop using Windows, in the wake of a malware attack which exploited a Firefox vulnerability in the Tor Browser Bundle.

Websites for businesses such as furniture stores have been hacked to host child pornography images – and the likely motivation is to spread malware, an internet charity has warned.

A malware outbreak which reveals the IP addresses of computer users has struck sites on the anonymous Tor network, including some said to host child pornography – with forum users suggesting that the outbreak might be the work of the FBI.

I recently completed my 14th Virus Bulletin conference paper, co-written with Intego’s Lysa Myers, on “Mac hacking: the way to better testing?” to be presented at the 23rd VB conference in October, in Berlin. The paper itself won’t be available until after the conference, but the abstract is on the Virus Bulletin conference page here.

Borrowing an iPhone charger – or using one in a public place – might be more risky than you think. Researchers from Georgia Tech showed off an attack this week which used a modified iPhone charger to infect an iPhone 5 with spyware in under a minute.

A new ransomware infection scares its victims by invoking the name of the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Cyber Security Division – and frightens users further by posting a webcam picture.