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We’ve just come across an IRC controlled backdoor that enables the infected machine to become a bot for Distributed Denial of Service attacks. The interesting part about it is that it’s a Mach-O binary – targeting Mac OS X. ESET’s research team compared this to samples in our malware collection and discovered that this code
ESET had quite a strong representation at Virus Bulletin this year in Barcelona, as David Harley mentioned in his post prior to the conference. On the first day, Pierre-Marc Bureau presented his findings about the Kelihos botnet, David Harley and AVG’s Larry Bridwell discussed the usefulness and present state of AV testing, and to finish
On Saturday, another controversial report of a “government trojan” appeared. This time it is the German government that has been accused by the European hacker club Chaos Computer Club (CCC) of using “lawful interception” malware. Hence, “Bundestrojaner” (Federal Trojan), though that name is normally applied to the legal concept that allows German police to make
One of the blessings of Open Source initiatives is the rapidity with which coders can release quality collaborative code. This is one of the ways the Android managed to claw its way into the smartphone mainstream, after arriving late to the game. But as the app ecosystem matures, vulnerability/patch management becomes more of an issue,
There’s a new batch of malware making the rounds, this time directed at spreading banking malware through childrens’ games. Though it’s hard to imagine, the scammers are taking advantage of the naivete of kids, who may not be as skilled at detecting scams as their more seasoned parents. According to an article in Softpedia, the
New stolen digital certificates are used by the multi-purpose backdoor Qbot. The criminals behind the Qbot trojan are certainly not inactive. As I mentioned in a blog post earlier this month, after a quiet summer we have seen a batch of new Qbot variants. An interesting fact is that the malicious binaries were digitally signed.
A new trojan has been released targeting the Macintosh Chinese-language user community. The trojan appears to the user to be a PDF containing a Chinese language article on the long-running dispute over whether Japan or China owns the Diaoyu Islands. When the user opens the “PDF” file, it attempts to mask the installation
Recently, we’ve noted a steep rise in Android malware and predicted the rise in banking malware, now we see another example in the wild, this time SpyEye. Trusteer has a good rundown on it, saying “It seems that SpyEye distributors are catching up with the mobile market as they (finally) target the Android mobile platform.
ESET has discovered a new version of the Delphi infector, Win32/Induc. Unlike its predecessors, however, this variant incorporates a seriously malicious payload and has acquired some extra file infection and self-replicative functionality. Two years ago, we published comprehensive information (here , here, and here) about the virus Win32/Induc.A, which infected Delphi files at compile-time. Though
The authors of Win32/Qbot (a.k.a. Qakbot) are back with new variants of this infamous malware, and this time the binaries are digitally signed. Qbot is a multifunctional trojan that has had some significant impact in the past. It has also been around a while, with the first variants dating as far back as spring 2007,
Awhile back we mused that the rapid rise in Android malware would hit its stride near the intersection of widespread mobile financial transaction use, and the continuing steep rise in adoption of the platform. Now we see AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon entering a joint venture to back a payment service for, guess what: Mobile financial
Among the many different trojans that spread on Facebook, something popped up recently that caught our particular attention. The threat, detected by ESET as Win32/Delf.QCZ, is interesting for several reasons. Distribution First, let’s look at the distribution vector. Win32/Delf.QCZ relies on the old “fake codec/media player trick” and links to the malware-laden site are
The most common malware technique for avoiding detection is to create loads of “fresh” variants. Actually, the component that changes so frequently is the packer – the outer layer of the malware, used by malware authors to encrypt the malware and make it harder to detect – whilst the functionality of the malicious code inside
…one Yasuhiro Kawaguchi was arrested yesterday on suspicion of “saving a virus on his computer,” though the story suggests distribution of malware too…
It’s something of a truism, that ‘old viruses never die’, and that certainly seems to be the case for some of the older, more widespread, email worms. In this interview (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041129/news_lz1b29five.html) back in 2004, I talked about an email worm called “Win32/Zafi.b” which, at the time, had recently been spreading on a global scale. However,
In a ComputerWorld article Gregg Kaiser cites a Microsoft engineer as saying that the trojan that Microsoft calls “Popureb” digs so deeply that the only way to eradicate it is to reinstall the operating system. If you read the Microsoft blog Feng didn’t actually say that this is the only way to eradicate the trojan.
Android Smartphones are under attack again by rogue applications that once installed are reading information from the phone and sending it back to a pre-assigned location. According to mobile security firm as many as 120,000 users may have been infected from a cafeteria selection of at least two dozen applications from the Android Market. “Once
Security companies in general and, unfortunately, anti-malware companies in particular, are often accused of ‘hyping’ threats because of a perceived self-interest. However, in the main, legitimate vendors and researchers like those at ESET typically try to resist overhyping or playing up threats where possible, in favor of more balanced discussion that can help customers take
Yesterday the U.S. president, Barak Obama, held a conference at the White House to announce that the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. With no doubt, this is a story with an international impact, which the people will remember in the coming days and… attackers as well. As expected,
Aryeh Goretsky posted a blog about a trojan program in a Microsoft catalog update. I thought it might be a little interesting to know how this can happen and why it doesn’t happen more often. As it turns out, it was once my job to make sure that Microsoft did not release infected software. Initially
UPDATE #1 Randy Abrams has posted a follow-up article, Anatomy of a Biting Bunny – The Infected Microsoft Catalog Update with additional information about how update services work, why they might distribute third-party code and what might be done to prevent malware from being distributed on services like Microsoft’s Windows Update in the future. 7-FEB-2011. Last week, we