A report recently released by an information security services firm claims that a group of hackers have released information exposed by a data breach against three of the major U.S. antivirus software companies.
This group of hackers, self-named “Fxmsp”,
aims to sell source code owned by companies, in addition to the keys to access
their corporate networks for about $300k USD. In addition, hackers have
revealed samples of information that seems to confirm the veracity of the
attacks.
According to the reports, the information
security services firm notified the alleged victims of their investigation, in
addition to providing some details to the police. The hacker group would have
begun to offer this confidential information using private communication
channels, such as dark web hacking forums or Telegram chats.
Fxmsp is a group of hackers well known among
the community of cyber crime, as its main activity is the sale of information
stolen in data breaches, primarily attacking global companies and critical
government organizations’ infrastructure; the data breach in the multinational
hotel chain Marriott
has been linked to the activities of this criminal group.
Last March, the group said it was able to sell
exclusive information stolen from the main antivirus companies in the United
States, mention the specialists from the information security services firm. “Today, almost two months after this
statement, we confirm that this group has an exclusive source code related to the
software development of antivirus companies”.
According to the specialists of the
International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) hackers managed to steal the
source code that included the code for antivirus software, analytic code based
on automatic learning and some security plugins for use in browsers.
“Fxmsp has stated that its hacking
capabilities improve continuously, increasing the possibility that they can
access information stored in secure systems”, the specialists added.
