Beacon : A new advance payload for Cobalt Strike

Raphael Mudge Creator of Cobalt Strike announced Another Advance Payload for Cobalt Strike called "Beacon". In a conversation with The Hacker News Raphael said "A big gap in the penetration tester's toolbox are covert command and control options, especially for long engagements. Beacon is a new...

Attack on SCADA Vendor Telvent Raises Concerns

Telvent, the maker of a SCADA product used in a number of critical industries, said that its corporate network has been compromised by attackers and that some of the files used by customers on their own networks were changed. This attack is the latest in what looks to be a series of incidents of...

Large-Scale Water Holing Attack Campaigns Hitting Key Targets

A new APT-style espionage campaign launched this summer targeting organizations tied to financial services, government agencies and the defense industry used a technique dubbed water holing to entice victims and silently redirect them to sites hosting zero-day exploits. Researchers at RSA Securit...

Grum Botnet Attempts Another Comeback, Fails Again

The Grum botnet, which Dutch authorities and security researchers knocked offline earlier this summer, made a second, unsuccessful attempt at a comeback over the weekend when the bot herders stood up two new command-and-control servers in Turkey. The revival was short-lived however, and both C&Cs...

New Iteration of TDSS/TDL-4 Botnet Uses Domain Fluxing to Avoid Detection

A new version of the TDSS/TDL-4 botnet is rapidly growing, primarily because it’s having great success using an evasion technique known as a domain generation algorithm DGA to avoid detection, researchers at Damballa Security revealed today. The algorithm helps the latest version of the botnet...

Microsoft Carries out Nitol Botnet Takedown

A botnet known as Nitol, built on the backs of PCs and laptops loaded with malware somewhere in the supply chain, was taken down by Microsoft. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit was given permission this week by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to take over the 3322.org...

Plugx RAT targeting government organizations in Japan using spear phishing

Roland Dela Paz Threat Researcher at TrendMirco reported that last year a Malware Campaign to target specific users in Japan, China, and Taiwan once again on rise using new breed of Remote Access Tool RAT called Plugx also known as Korplug. This new custom made version comes for less recognition...

Backdoor.LV Samples On the Rise

A strain of malware called Backdoor.LV that uses a custom protocol over port 80 to communicate with its command and control server has been consistently increasing its reach since May, according to a report from FireEye. The security firm observed Backdoor.LV determining its host’s NetBIOS name,...

Iran still on target of 'Mahdi' malware after detection

In JULY Kaspersky Lab and Seculert revealed the presence of a new cyber-espionage weapon known targeting users in the Middle East. Despite the recent uncovering of the 'Madhi' malware that has infected several hundred computers in the Middle East, researchers say the virus is continuing to spread...

Oracle Releases Fix For Java CVE-2012-4681 Flaw

Oracle on Thursday released a new version of Java that included a fix for the CVE-2012-4681 vulnerability that has been used in limited targeted attacks in the last couple of weeks. The release of Java 7 update 7 comes about four days after the Java flaw was publicly disclosed, but several months...

Use of Java Zero-Day Flaws Tied to Nitro Attack Crew

Researchers say that one of the attack groups using the two new Java zero-day vulnerabilities is the same group that was behind an earlier targeted attack campaign from 2011. That group was traced back to China and was essentially running a spear-phishing campaign, but now the crew, known as Nitr...

Security Firm Reveals Flaw in Dirt Jumper Bot

A team of researchers has discovered a weakness in the command-and-control infrastructure of one of the major DDoS toolkits, Dirt Jumper, that enables them to stop attacks that are in progress. The command and control C&C servers of the Dirt Jumper DDoS toolkit can be compromised and, in principl...

MyAgent Trojan Targets Defense and Aerospace Industries

FireEye Security experts are analyzing a targeted trojan that leverages emailed PDF files to gain access to systems and deliver its payload to specified networks in the aerospace, chemical, defense and tech industries. "We have seen different versions of this malware arriving as an exe inside a...

Researchers Release Detection Tool For Gauss Malware's Palida Narrow Font

One of the many mysteries around the discovery of the Gauss malware is why the tool installs a new font called Palida Narrow on infected machines. Researchers have been unable to figure out yet what the purpose of the font is, but as its presence on a PC is a good indicator of a Gauss infection,...

Report: Stealthy New Banking Malware Tilon Emerges

A new type of financial malware has surfaced that’s targeting information submitted through banking forms via the “Man in the Browser” MITB technique and proving difficult to detect, according to research published by computer security firm Trusteer today. A blog entry by the company’s Chief...

Zeus malware targeting BlackBerry and Android devices

Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered five new samples of the ZeuS-in-the-Mobile ZitMo malware package, targeting Android and BlackBerry devices. Zitmo Zeus in the mobile is the name given to the mobile versions of Zeus, and it's been around for a couple of years already, mostly...

Alleged Mariposa Botmaster in Court

One of the men authorities allege to have been behind the massive–and now dead–Mariposa botnet, has gone on trial in Slovenia, more than two years after the initial arrests and takedown of the network. Mariposa was one of the first handful of botnets that authorities and security researchers work...

New OpFake Android Malware Entices Users With Opera Mini Browser

There is a new variant of the OpFake mobile malware making the rounds, and this version comes bundled with a version of the legitimate Opera Mini mobile browser. The malware targets Android phones and steals money from victims by sending SMS messages without the user’s knowledge to premium-rate...

Religious 'Madi' Spyware Spies on Critical Infrastructure in Middle East

A new variety of spyware has been targeting users in Iran, Israel and the Middle East for the last eight months according to joint research from Israeli security software firm Seculert and Kaspersky Lab. The new malware is using a variety of odd techniques and misdirection to entice users to...

Three Baltic Men Jailed After Using SpyEye Malware

Two men found using the SpyEye Trojan to swindle users out of their banking information were jailed last week after violating the United Kingdom’s Computer Misuse Act. Pavel Cyganok, 28, a Lithuanian, along with Ilja Zakrevski, 26, an Estonian, were jailed for four years while a third man, Latvia...