Royal Baby Spam Campaign Leads to Black Hole-Infected Site

Everyone loves babies, especially magical royal ones who are destined to pull a sword from a stone. As it turns out, the baby admiring demographic also includes spammers, who are using the current frenzy over the birth of Prince William and Duchess Kate’s baby boy to direct victims to a site...

NBC Website Hacked, Leading Visitors to Citadel Banking Malware

Another day, another media company hacked. This time it’s NBC which has fallen to victim hackers on the heels of compromises of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal websites. Various experts have confirmed that NBC’s website is compromised and leading visitors to the dangerous Citadel banki...

Group behind largest Ransomware campaign arrested by Spanish police

Police in Spain have arrested a gang of 11 cyber criminals who used ransomware to demand money from thousands of victims in 30 countries using malware known as Reveton. Police arrested six Russians, two Ukrainians and two Georgians in the Costa del Sol. The gang leader, a 27-year-old Russian, was...

Group behind largest Ransomware campaign arrested by Spanish police

Police in Spain have arrested a gang of 11 cyber criminals who used ransomware to demand money from thousands of victims in 30 countries using malware known as Reveton. Police arrested six Russians, two Ukrainians and two Georgians in the Costa del Sol. The gang leader, a 27-year-old Russian, was...

Necurs Rootkit Infections Way Up

Infections from a nasty bit of malware, generally delivered by the Black Hole Exploit Kit, surged in November, hitting more than 83,000 machines. Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center rates the Necurs rootkit threat as severe. Dubbed a rootkit by Kaspersky Lab, Necurs has many dimensions to it...

Fake Facebook Alert Emails Link to Black Hole Sites

Attackers are sending spoofed “pending notification” emails to Facebook users, claiming that the recipients overlooked some alert on the world’s largest social network, and providing them with a link that supposedly leads to the allegedly neglected content but which, in reality, funnels users to ...

New Java Attack Introduced into Cool Exploit Kit

A new exploit has been found in the Cool Exploit Kit for a vulnerability in Java 7 Update 7 as well as older versions, a flaw that’s been patched by Oracle in Java 7 Update 9. Cool Exploit Kit was discovered last month and is largely responsible for dropping the Reveton ransomware. A new Metasplo...

ZeroAccess Botnet Cashing in on Click Fraud and Bitcoin Mining

A mid-year switch in communication protocol and distribution strategy is behind a spike in activity from the ZeroAccess botnet, a prolific and malicious ad click fraud network. Researchers at Kindsight Security Lab reported today that ZeroAccess accounts for 29 percent of home network infections ...

Fake Payroll Confirmation Email Leads to Black Hole Exploit Kit

Criminal hackers launched an attack campaign earlier this week in which they sent a slew of emails purporting to come from the financial software developer Intuit. The emails contained links that led to sites hosting the Blackhole exploit kit in an apparent attempt to infect the machines of...

Black Hole Exploit Kit Targeting Java CVE-2012-1723 Flaw

A new fork of the Black Hole exploit kit is making quick work of a recently patched Java vulnerability and security researchers say that the attackers are registering new sites quickly to exploit users with vulnerable browsers. The CVE-2012-1723 Java vulnerability that the Black Hole exploit kit ...

MSXML Exploit Surfaces in Black Hole Kit

Attackers really like exploit kits because they offer users the ease of point-and-click exploitation, lots of potential targets and don’t require a huge amount of technical knowledge to use. Attackers also enjoy Microsoft vulnerabilities, especially unpatched ones, because of the massive installe...

Compromised WordPress Sites Redirecting to Black Hole Exploit Kit Servers

The Black Hole exploit kit is really becoming a serious pain in the neck for people trying to use the Internet. At some point, it may become easier to start a list of the URLs that aren’t hosting the exploit kit, rather than the ones that are. For the time being, the latest entry in the latter...

Black Hole Exploit Kit Available for Free

Just a couple of weeks after the source code for the Zeus crimeware kit turned up on the Web, the Black Hole exploit kit now appears to be available for download for free, as well. Black Hole normally sells for $1,500 for an annual license, and is one of the more powerful attack toolkits on the...