Exploit kits remain a cybercrime staple against outdated software – 2016 threat landscape review series

Despite the disruption of Axpergle Angler, which dominated the landscape in early 2016, exploit kits as a whole continued to be a threat to PCs running unpatched software. Some of the most prominent threats, from malvertising to ransomware, used exploit kits to infect millions of computers...

DNSChanger Malware is Back! Hijacking Routers to Target Every Connected Device

Next time when you see an advertisement of your favorite pair of shoes on any website, even if it is legitimate, just DO NOT CLICK ON IT. …Because that advertising could infect you in such a way that not just your system, but every device connected to your network would get affected. A few days...

DNSChanger Exploit Kit Hijacks Routers, Not Browsers

Attackers are targeting more than 166 router models with an exploit kit called DNSChanger that is being distributed via malvertising. Researchers at Proofpoint said the exploit kit is unique because the malvertising component of the attack doesn’t target browsers, rather a victim’s router. Some o...

Hacking Millions with Just an Image — Recipe: Pixels, Ads & Exploit Kit

If you have visited any popular mainstream website over the past two months, your computer may have been infected — Thanks to a new exploit kit discovered by security researchers. Researchers from antivirus provider ESET released a report on Tuesday stating that they have discovered an exploit ki...

TrickBot Banking Trojan Adds New Browser Manipulation Tools

The TrickBot banking Trojan, a close relative to Dyre, has a growing target list and new browser manipulation techniques, experts at IBM X-Force said. “We expect to see it amplify infection campaigns and fraud attacks, sharpen its aim on business and corporate accounts,” wrote Limor Kessem,...

Picking Up Where Neutrino Left Off: RIG Pushing CrypMIC Ransomware

When an exploit kit fades away, it usually doesn’t take long for another to take its place in the limelight, especially when the kit is an integral part of the ransomware ecosystem. That’s exactly what’s happened over the past few weeks as researchers say they’ve seen an uptick in RIG Exploit Kit...

Microsoft Patches Zero Day Used in AdGholas Malvertising Campaigns

An attack group behind a long-running malvertising campaign made effective use of a previously unreported low-level vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Edge browsers to rake in money via banking Trojans and ad fraud. Microsoft patched the zero-day this week among dozens of other...

Microsoft Fixes 47 Vulnerabilities with September Patch Tuesday

Microsoft patched 47 vulnerabilities as part of 14 security bulletins, seven critical, with its monthly Patch Tuesday updates today. The company is warning users that if left unpatched, 10 of the issues can lead to remote execution. The updates resolve issues in Microsoft Windows, Office, Office...

Malvertising Campaign Pushing Neutrino Exploit Kit Shut Down

A global malvertising campaign exposing potentially one million users to the risk of being infected with CrypMIC ransomware delivered via the Neutrino Exploit Kit has been shut down, according to researchers. Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group, which discovered the criminal...

AdGholas Malvertising Campaign Leveraged Steganography, Filtering

For over a year attackers were able to carry out a malvertising campaign that managed to draw between one and five million client hits a day, according to researchers. The scam infected thousands a day using a one-two-punch of filtering and steganography, the art of hiding information inside...

Researchers Crack Furtim, SFG Malware Connection

New research is challenging what security researchers know about Furtim, a new malware strain that has been compared to Stuxnet because of its believed targeting of industrial controls in energy companies. According to security experts at Damballa, Furtim and the recently discovered SFG malware a...

Neutrino EK Spotted Leveraging Patched IE Zero Day

Attackers behind the Neutrino Exploit Kit didn’t take long to co-op a recently patched Internet Explorer zero-day into its arsenal. Researchers claim the kit has been pushing CVE-2016-0189, a vulnerability that was reportedly used in targeted attacks on South Korean organizations earlier this yea...

Wiping Out a Malicious Campaign Abusing Chinese Ad Platform

At FireEye Labs, we have discovered another well-crafted malvertising campaign that uses the ad API of one of the world’s largest search engines: China-based Baidu. The attacker employs a simple HTML redirector instead of shellcode or an exploit in an apparently benign-looking website. This leads...

Wiping Out a Malicious Campaign Abusing Chinese Ad Platform

At FireEye Labs, we have discovered another well-crafted malvertising campaign that uses the ad API of one of the world’s largest search engines: China-based Baidu. The attacker employs a simple HTML redirector instead of shellcode or an exploit in an apparently benign-looking website. This leads...

Malvertising Campaign Hits Top Websites to Spread Ransomware

Hackers are always in search for an elite method to create loopholes in the cyberspace to implement the dark rules in the form of vulnerability exploitation. Top Trustworthy sites such as The New York Times, BBC, MSN, AOL and many more are on the verge of losing their face value as a malwertized...

Malvertising Campaign Lands On Top Websites

Big-name websites were hit with a cunning malvertising campaign over the weekend that attempted to sneak TeslaCrypt ransomware on computers vulnerable to the potent Angler Exploit Kit. Top sites running the malicious ads included The New York Times owned NYTimes.com, Answers.com and AOL.com,...

Amazon Certificate Manager Brings Free SSL Certs to AWS Users

Amazon is getting into the certificate game. The company announced late last week that it launched a certificate manager to expedite the process of securing SSL/TLS certificates for customers looking to add HTTPS to their sites or apps. The move comes less than a year after Amazon applied to...

Bot Fraud to Cost Advertisers $7 Billion in 2016

Mitigating fraud has long been an uphill battle for the online advertising world and numbers released Tuesday indicate it’s been a pricey one. The industry is poised to lose a combined $7.2 billion worldwide this year thanks to bogus ad fraud bots, according to a study carried out this past summe...

Hackers Install Free SSL Certs from Let's Encrypt On Malicious Web Sites

Who else didn't see this coming? It was so obvious as I stressed earlier that the Let's Encrypt free HTTPS certificates would not just help legitimate website operators to encrypt its users' traffic, but also help criminals to bother innocent users with malware through secure sites. Let's Encrypt...

Top-ranked Advertising Network Leads to Exploit Kit

Threat Overview The online advertisements that people see across a wide range of popular and lesser-known websites can lead to malware infections and other forms of compromise, sometimes without any user interaction whatsoever and without any indicators there is an issue. This emerging threat is...