Malvertising Leads to Magnitude Exploit Kit, Ransomware Infection

Criminals are injecting malicious redirect code into advertisements in order to route user traffic toward sites hosting the Magnitude exploit kit, which, in turn, infects those users with strains of file-encrypting ransomware. Magnitude predominately relies on drive-by-download attacks in which i...

Chicago Police Department Pays $600 Cryptoware Ransom to Cybercriminals

Cyber criminals have started targeting government enforcement of the Ransomware in an attempt to extort money. Recently, the police department of the Midlothian Village in Illinois has paid a ransom of over $600 in Bitcoins to an unknown hacker after being hit by a popular ransomware attack. The...

Cryptowall 3.0 Slims Down, Removes Exploits From Dropper

A slimmed down version of Cryptowall is in circulation, and this one contains no built-in exploits, confirming a growing trend that most ransomware will be spread almost exclusively via exploit kits. Kits such as Angler, Nuclear, and most recently Hanjuan, have been busy incorporating Flash...

New Cryptowall 3.0 Ransomware Communicates over I2P Anonymous Network

We have seen a series of Ransomware tended to be simple with dogged determinations to extort money from victims. But with the exponential rise in the samples of Ransomware last year, we saw more subtle in design, including "Cryptolocker" that was taken down along with the "Gameover ZeuS" botnet...

Crowti Cryptowall 3.0 Ransomware Moving in I2P Network

A new strain of the Crowti ransomware, also dubbed Cryptowall 3.0, was spotted by researchers early this week after a quiet period during the holiday season. The twist to these recent infections is that the malware communicates over the I2P anonymity network. French researcher Kafeine confirmed...

Malicious Ads on Yahoo, AOL, Trigger CryptoWall Infections

Attackers have been leveraging the FlashPack Exploit Kit to peddle the CryptoWall 2.0 ransomware on unsuspecting visitors to sites such as Yahoo, The Atlantic and AOL. Researchers believe that for about a month the malvertising campaign hit up to 3 million visitors and netted the attackers $25,00...

New Signed Version of CryptoWall Ransomware On the Loose

UPDATE–Researchers have discovered a variant of the CryptoWall ransomware that has a valid digital signature and is being distributed through malicious ads on several top-ranked Alexa Web sites. CryptoWall is one of the more successful ransomware strains in recent memory, with researchers...

jQuery Official Website Compromised To Serve Malware

The official website of the popular cross-platform JavaScript library jQuery jquery.com has been compromised and redirecting its visitors to a third-party website hosting the RIG exploit kit, in order to distribute information-stealing malware. JQuery is a free and open source JavaScript library...

CryptoWall Ransomware Earns $1.1M, Encrypts 5 Billion Files

CryptoWall is a million-dollar business. The file-encrypting ransomware has netted the criminal gang responsible for its development and dispersal, more than $1.1 million in the six months it’s been in the wild, researchers at Dell SecureWorks’ Counter Threat Unit said in a report this week. The...

RIG Exploit Kit Pushing Cryptowall Ransomware

With Cryptolocker quite possibly on its way to becoming yesterday’s ransomware news after the successful takedown of part of its distribution infrastructure, alternatives are already available. Cryptowall is the latest to grab some attention and traction on victimized computers. Cisco reported on...

Cryptowall Ransomware Spreading Rapidly through Malicious Advertisements

Ransomware is an emerging threat in the evolution of cybercriminals techniques to part you from your money. Typically, the malicious software either lock victim’s computer system or encrypt the documents and files on it, in order to extort money from the victims. Though earlier we saw the samples...