A Peek Inside the Underground Ransomware Economy

Ransomware is not just a type of malware – it’s also at the center of a sophisticated, flourishing underground economy that has all the conventions of legitimate commerce. It’s a community made up of major malware developers, affiliates and channel partners, and those that provide adjacent...

Ransomware Going for $4K on the Cyber-Underground

In the cybercriminal underground, ransomware samples and builders are going for anywhere between $300 to $4,000, with ransomware-as-a-service rentals costing $120 to $1,900 per year. That’s according to an analysis by Kaspersky of the three main underground forums where ransomware is circulated...

Researchers Dissect Spammers' Economic Ecosystem

A profitable spam campaign has three key elements—a reliable email list, filter-busting content, and a botnet for distribution—and each has been individually dissected and understood. But in order to adequately protect users from spam, which thrives in an established economic ecosystem, researche...

KINS Banking Trojan For Sale in Underground Forum

It seems the cybercrime underground is pining for a new breed of banking Trojan. With heavyweights such as Citadel no longer generally available for purchase, rumblings on forums for months have indicated that a new project would be welcomed and financed. Since February, researchers at RSA’s...

Cybercrime Gang Recruiting Botmasters for Large-Scale MiTM Attacks on American Banks

A slew of major American banks, some already stressed by a stream of DDoS attacks carried out over the past 10 days, may soon have to brace themselves for a large-scale coordinated attack bent on pulling off fraudulent wire transfers. RSA’s FraudAction research team has been monitoring undergroun...

Elections 2012 and DDoS attacks in Russia

Vitaly Kamluk As Eugene Kaspersky had written earlier, we were expecting new DDoS attacks on resources covering the Russian presidential election. So, as the country went to the polls on 4 March, we were on the lookout for new DDoS attacks. We were surprised to hear a news report from one mass...