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, […]
forensics
FBI Seizes Dozens of Online ‘Dark Markets’
The news yesterday was that the FBI arrested a 26 year-old San Francisco man responsible for operating Silk Road 2.0 – an anonymous, online marketplace for illicit goods. The news on Friday is that Silk Road was just the tip of the iceberg. On Friday, the FBI and announced that it has seized dozens of other so-called “dark market” websites offering a range of illegal goods and services for sale on the “Tor” network. The coordinated take downs are the “largest law enforcement action to date against criminal websites operating on the ‘Tor’ network,” the FBI said in a statement. “We shut down the original Silk Road website and now we have shut down its replacement, as well as multiple other ‘dark market’ sites allegedly offering all manner of illicit goods and services, from firearms to computer hacking,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara The take-downs were part of a coordinated law enforcement action […]
Dusting For Malware’s Bloody Prints
Malicious software is nothing new. Computer viruses and worms have been around for decades, as have most other families of malware like remote access tools (RATs) and key loggers. But all our experience with malware hasn’t made the job of knowing when our organization has been hit by it any easier. In fact, recent news stories about breaches at Home Depot, Target, Staples and other organizations makes it clear that even sophisticated and wealthy corporations can easily overlook both the initial compromise and endemic malware infections – and at great cost. That may be why phrases like “dwell time” or “time to discovery” seem to pop up again and again in discussions of breach response. There’s no longer any shame in getting “popped.” The shame is in not knowing that it happened. Greg Hoglund says he has a fix for that latter problem. His new company, Outlier Security, isn’t “next generation […]
Europol Warns of Internet of Things Risk
In a newly released report, Europol’s European Cybercrime Center (EC3) warns that the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) threatens to strengthen the hand of organized cyber criminal groups and make life much more difficult for police and governments that wish to pursue them. EC3’s latest Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA) says the “Internet of Everything” will greatly complicate the work of law enforcement creating “new opportunities for everything from cyber criminals to state actors to child abusers. The growing numbers of connected devices will greatly expand the “attack surface” available for cyber criminal activity, the EC3 warns. Cyber criminals may co-opt connected devices for use in common criminal activity (like denial of service attacks and spam campaigns). However, advancements like connected (“smart”) vehicles and infrastructure create openings for large scale and disruptive attacks. The report, which was published late last months, is a high level position paper and pulls data mostly […]
Chief Security Officer: The Toughest Job In IT?
Register now for our CISO Hangout with Jon Trull of Qualys, the former Chief Security Officer for the State of Colorado. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are in the news a lot these days. The breaches at prominent corporations like Target, Home Depot and (this week) JP Morgan have solidified the consensus that the CISO is a necessary complement to the CIO. They’ve also shone a spotlight on what many consider to be the toughest job in corporate America. After all, successful cyber attacks and data breaches are the quickest path to a ruined corporate reputation. And a strong and capable CISO is increasingly seen as the best defense against such an unfortunate occurrence. (Target’s misfortune was the direct result, some argued, on its lack of a CISO.) With all that in the air, the time couldn’t be better to sit down with some of the top CISOs in industry and the public […]
