In-brief: news from incumbent endpoint protection firms Symantec and Kaspersky Lab that they are ramping up efforts to sell their wares into industrial control systems environments suggests that the death of anti virus may have been greatly exaggerated.
Kaspersky Lab
Russian Firm Alleges 15 Year NSA Cyberespionage Campaign
In-brief: Kaspersky Lab issued a report Monday alleging its researchers discovered evidence of a long-running cyber espionage campaign with links to the U.S. government and National Security Agency.
Was Malware Behind A Billion Dollar Heist?
In-brief: The New York Times reports on a massive online heist involving more than 100 banks worldwide and losses of between $300 million and $1 billion, according to the security firm Kaspersky Lab.
Discrete Malware Lures Execs At High-End Hotels
Kaspersky Lab has a fascinating write-up of malware it is calling “DarkHotel.” The information-stealing software is believed to target traveling executives. Curiously, Kaspersky says the malware may be almost a decade old and is found only on the wireless networks and business centers of select, high-end hotels. Reports about targeted attacks on traveling executives are nothing new. However, the Kaspersky report (PDF version here) may be the most detailed yet on a specific malicious software family that is devoted to hacking senior corporate executives. According to Kaspersky, the DarkHotel malicious software maintained a presence on hotel networks for years, with evidence of its operation going back as far as 2007. The malware used that persistent access to target select hotel guests, leveraging check-in/check-out and identity information on guests to limit attacks to high value targets. Targeted guests were presented with iFrame based attacks that were launched from the hotel’s website, […]
Google Adds Detection For Obad Malware
Just a follow-up to our story from last week on Obad, the new family of mobile malware that affects Google Android devices: In an e-mail to The Security Ledger on Friday, Google acknowledged the existence of the Trojan horse program and has updated its detection tools to be able to identify it. In an e-mail, a Google spokeswoman said that the malware, dubbed “Obad” by Kaspersky Lab, was not found on the company’s Google Play application store. The company added detection for the new malware to its Application Verification Tool, which protects Android users who tried to download it from a third-party application store or browser. Obad, or Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a, is described as a “multi function Trojan” that primarily acts as an SMS Trojan, surreptitiously sending short message service (SMS) messages to premium numbers. It was first described in a blog post by Kaspersky Lab researcher malware researcher Roman Unuchek last week. Unuchek […]
