Shylock/Caphaw Banking Malware Infections on the Rise

Two dozen major U.S. and European banks are in the crosshairs of the Shylock, or Caphaw, financial malware of late, and victims who trade with one of the 24 financial institutions are at risk of giving up their credentials and losing assets in their accounts. Malware researchers have noticed a ri...

Kelihos P2P Botnet Leveraging Composite Blocking Lists

Kelihos, the peer-to-peer botnet with nine lives, keeps popping up with new capabilities that enable it to sustain itself and make money for its keepers by pushing spam, harvesting credentials and even stealing Bitcoins. According to a number of sources, Kelihos is now leveraging legitimate and...

Peer-to-Peer Botnet Takedowns a Challenge

The FBI, Justice Department and technology companies have had success shutting down botnets that rely on a centralized infrastructure and command and control servers to communicate with bots, steal data or send malicious commands. Peer-to-peer botnets, however, have proven more difficult to take...

PushDo Malware DGA Now Generates .KZ Domains

For every punch a hacker throws, there is a counter from a security company, and then, inevitably, the hacker adjusts again. That’s what’s happening right now with the PushDo malware. This week, Dell SecureWorks, Damballa Lab and Georgia Tech University combined on a research report exposing the...

PushDo Malware Returns with Domain Generation Algorithm

Four times since 2008, authorities and technology companies have taken the prolific PushDo malware and Cutwail spam botnet offline. Yet much like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps coming back for more. In early March, researchers at Damballa discovered a new version of the malware that had adopted a...

Watching a Botnet From the Inside

When you hear about botnets such as Rustock, Mariposa or Grum being taken down, one of the tactics that’s usually involved is sinkholing. The technique, which involves pointing the infected machines to a server controlled by good guys rather than attackers, often is used as one of the last steps ...

BlackHole Exploit Kit Gets New Domain-Generation Algorithm

Nothing is more frustrating than spending days or weeks compromising dozens of Web sites and setting up your network of malicious redirects and then finding out that someone has screwed it all up by taking down one of your infected sites. Luckily, the crew behind the BlackHole exploit kit has...

Updated Blackhole Exploit Kit Uses Random Domain Generation

An updated version of the Blackhole Exploit Kit appears to now offer an emerging technique to boost infection and redirection rates: a pseudo-random domain generator. The automation feature was discussed this week in a blog post by Symantec security researcher Nick Johnston, in which he outlined...

Researchers Confirm 600K-Strong Flashback Botnet Is Mostly Mac

Kaspersky Lab researchers say that analysis of the Flashfake botnet confirms the size of the malicious network and that it consists mostly of Mac OS X machines. Researchers at Kaspersky wrote on Friday that they were able to reverse engineer the domain generation algorithm used by the botnet, the...

Attackers Adjusting Tactics to Evade Reputation Systems

BARCELONA–As in life, reputations on the Internet take time to build up. Attackers interested in making a quick buck aren’t necessarily the most patient lot, so as the various repuation systems on the Web have gotten more sophisticated and accurate, the bad guys have had to adjust their tactics a...

New Malware Murofet Following Conficker's Lead

It’s been a blissful few months since Conficker last reared its over-hyped head, but now there’s a new piece of malware that is adopting some of the tactics that Conficker used. The malware, known as Murofet, is using Conficker’s technique of generating thousands of new domains for updates every...