What Happens When Victims Pay Ransomware Attackers?

For many hackers around the globe, ransomware infections have become a lucrative business. Although these types of malware samples have been around for years now, they continue to spur success - and high monetary profits - for attackers. In fact, according to a statement from U.S. Deputy Attorney...

iOS Fitness Apps Robbing Money From Apple Victims

Two apps that were posing as fitness-tracking tools were actually using Apple’s Touch ID feature to loot money from unassuming iOS victims. The two impacted apps were the “Fitness Balance App” and “Calories Tracker App.” Both apps looked normal, and served functions like calculating BMI, tracking...

U.S Charges Two Iranian Hackers for SamSam Ransomware Attacks

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday charges against two Iranian nationals for their involvement in creating and deploying the notorious SamSam ransomware. The alleged hackers, Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah, 27, have been charged on several counts of computer hackin...

DarkPulsar FAQ

What's it all about? In March 2017, a group of hackers calling themselves "the Shadow Brokers" published a chunk of stolen data that included two frameworks: DanderSpritz and FuzzBunch. The Fuzzbunch framework contains various types of plugins designed to analyze victims, exploit vulnerabilities,...

SamSam Ransomware Attacks Extorted Nearly $6 Million

Ransomware has become a multimillion-dollar black market business for cybercriminals, and SamSam being a great example. New research revealed that the SamSam ransomware had extorted nearly $6 million from its victims since December 2015, when the cyber gang behind the ransomware started...

CoinVault Ransomware Authors Sentenced to 240 Hours of Community Service

Almost three years after the arrest of two young Dutch brothers, who pleaded guilty to their involvement in creating and distributing CoinVault ransomware malware, a district court in Rotterdam today sentenced them to 240 hours of community service. In 2015, the two suspects — Melvin 25-year-old...

CoinVault Ransomware Authors Sentenced to 240 Hours of Community Service

Almost three years after the arrest of two young Dutch brothers, who pleaded guilty to their involvement in creating and distributing CoinVault ransomware malware , a district court in Rotterdam today sentenced them to 240 hours of community service. In 2015, the two suspects — Melvin 25-year-old...

Recent Andariel Group ActiveX Attacks Point to Future Targets

Researchers say that the North Korea-linked Andariel hacking group may be looking to switch up its targets, based on key changes in its script found on recently compromised websites. The Andariel group is associated with the infamous Lazarus Group, North Korea’s cyber-espionage unit. Andariel has...

Coinvault, the court case

Today, after almost 3 years of waiting, it was finally the day of the trial. In the Netherlands, where the whole case took place, the hearings are open to the public. Meaning anyone who is interested can visit. And it was quite busy. Because besides the suspects, their lawyers, the judges and the...

EFF Sues to Repeal Controversial Online Sex Trafficking FOSTA Law

The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Thursday announced it is suing to invalidate a recently passed law that is meant to fight online sex trafficking. The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 FOSTA, which was passed 97-2 by Congress in March and signed into law in...

Files Cannot Be Decrypted? Challenge Accepted. Talos Releases ThanatosDecryptor

This blog post was authored by Edmund Brumaghin, Earl Carter and Andrew Williams. Executive summary Cisco Talos has analyzed Thanatos, a ransomware variant that is being distributed via multiple malware campaigns that have been conducted over the past few months. As a result of our research, we...

FBI’s BEC Crackdown Leads To 74 Arrests Globally

The FBI announced Monday the results of a major crackdown on scammers behind business email compromise BEC campaigns that resulted in 74 arrests and the retrieval of millions of dollars. Several U.S. federal authorities and police from other countries were involved in Operation WireWire, a...

TeleGrab Malware Steals Telegram Desktop Messaging Sessions, Steam Credentials

Recently discovered malware steals cache data and secure messaging sessions from the desktop version of encrypted messaging service Telegram. The malware, dubbed TeleGrab, leverages weak default settings in the design of Telegram’s desktop version along with the desktop’s lack of support for Secr...

Who’s who in the Zoo

ZooPark is a cyberespionage operation that has been focusing on Middle Eastern targets since at least June 2015. The threat actors behind the operation infect Android devices using several generations of malware, with the attackers including new features in each iteration. We label them from v1-v...

A week in security (March 26 – April 01)

Last week, we looked at the thought process behind creating a ransomware decryptor, the inner workings of QuantLoader, the ways one can protect their Android devices, the exploit kits we have encountered this winter, the now-known epidemic of data breaches, the coming of TLS 1.3, and the ways one...

Tech support scammers GeeksHelp caught again, two years later

Many researchers have noted an increase in tech support scam activity during the past few months. This trend, facilitated by browser lockers, is not surprising considering that other web-based infection methods are not as effective. While people are still receiving cold calls from alleged Microso...

memcached, now with extortion!

Over the past week, memcached reflection attacks have taken the DDoS scene by storm. With several attacks hitting organizations across many industries, including a record breaking 1.3Tbps attack against an Akamai customer. Akamai has observed a new trend in extortion attempts using memcached...

IC3 Issues Alert on Increase in W-2 Phishing Campaigns

The Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 has issued an alert on the increase in W-2-related phishing campaigns. Fraudsters often use tax-related phishing emails to get victims to provide personally identifiable information, click on a malicious link, or pay a ransom. NCCIC/US-CERT encourages...

FTC Warns of Online Dating Scams

The Federal Trade Commission FTC has released an article addressing scams targeting online daters. In this type of fraud, cyber criminals target victims, gain their confidence, and trick them into sending money. To stay safer online, review the FTC article on Online Dating Scams and the...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin: Story of the year 2017

Download the Kaspersky Security Bulletin: Story of the year 2017 Introduction: what we learned in 2017 In 2017, the ransomware threat suddenly and spectacularly evolved. Three unprecedented outbreaks transformed the landscape for ransomware, probably forever. The attacks targeted businesses and...