Trailrunner7 writes "The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit has been spearheading botnet takedowns and other anti-cybercrime operations for many years, and it has had remarkable success. But the cybercrime problem isn't going away anytime soon, so the DCU is in the process of building a new cybercrime center here, and soon will roll out a new threat intelligence service to help ISPs and CERT teams get better data about ongoing attacks. Dennis Fisher sat down with TJ Campana, director of security at the DCU, to discuss the unit's work and what threats could be next on the target list."

mask.of.sanity writes "Lights, sounds and magnetic fields can be used to activate malware on phones, new research has found. The lab-style attacks defined in a paper (PDF) used pre-defined signals hidden in songs and TV programmes as a trigger to activate embedded malware. Malware once activated would carry out programmed attacks either by itself or as part of a wider botnet of mobile devices."

New submitter NitzJaaron writes "Some of us have been experiencing attacks on Wordpress sites for the last few days, but it's now beginning to be widely reported that there's a fairly large brute force attack happening on Wordpress users on multiple hosts, including HostGator and LiquidWeb. 'This attack is well organized and again very, very distributed; we have seen over 90,000 IP addresses involved in this attack.' CloudFlare has announced that they're giving all users (free and paid) protection from said attacks with their services. 'The attacker is brute force attacking the WordPress administrative portals, using the username "admin" and trying thousands of passwords.'" Further reports available from Immotion hosting and Melbourne server hosting.

An anonymous reader writes "A DDoS attack targeting American Express on March 28th was just one in a series of incidents by self-proclaimed 'cyber-fighters' over the past few weeks. Beyond that, it's part of a much longer campaign to disrupt financial infrastructure using attacks over the internet. Ars details the group behind the most recent attacks, called 'the cyber-fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.' From the article: 'Named after a Muslim cleric who led The Black Hand, an anti-British and anti-Zionist jihadist organization in the 1920s and 1930s, and sharing a name with the military wing of Hamas (which the group's statements claim it is tied to), Izz ad-Din al-Qassam has taken credit for a variety of attacks on U.S. financial institutions over the past year, all allegedly in protest against the posting of trailers for the film The Innocence of Muslims on YouTube. Until the film is removed, the group said it would target "properties of American-Zionist CapitalistsThis attack will continue till the Erasing of that nasty movie." [sic]' There are concerns that the group is providing cover for organizations looking to defraud those banks. 'But even if the group behind the attacks isn't profiting from them, [Arbor Networks' Dan Holden] said it's clear that there are very real investments being made in their activities—maybe not in servers or hard assets, but in the form of countless hours of maintenance of the botnet by finding new servers to exploit, and further development of attacks. "Regardless of who's behind this," Holden said, "it has to be funded at some level. Even if it's hacktivists, it's got to be funded hacktivism." That, he says, is because of both the amount of time dedicated to the attack, and to its ongoing refinement. "It's not that these are the most sophisticated things in the world," he explained, "but it has been getting more sophisticated, and it's growing."'"

Supp0rtLinux writes "Bitcoins are currently trading around $75. I work for a very large organization. We have a fairly large HPC that is usually about 50% idle, as well as about 18K desktops on 4 campuses connected with dark fiber. All stay on 24x7 for after-hours AV scans (weekly) and backups (2-3x a week). All are leases that refresh every 2 years so all have fairly good CPU & RAM specs. As part of a go-green initiative a proposal has come up to use all the PCs for bitcoin in our own mining group; sort of like SETI-at-home style, but with a real dollar value return to us. Additionally, we would setup a queue in our HPC that dedicates 30% to BC mining when in use and up to 99.5% when no other jobs are running. The thought is that all the PCs are on 24x7 anyway and consuming resources so why not allow them to be useful 24x7 as well and generate bitcoins which can then be sold to offset the electrical costs of the running equipment and/or possibly even make a little profit. The guy with the idea says its a no-lose situation as if the price of bitcoins drops to below a certain level and is no longer a financially viable option, we simply stop the mining process. I'm curious what the Slashdot community thinks of this? " Read on for a few more details.

An anonymous reader writes "A new trojan specifically for Macs has been discovered that installs an adware plugin. The malware attempts to monetize its attack by injecting ads into Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (the most popular browsers on Apple's desktop platform) in the hopes that users will generate money for its creators by viewing (and maybe even clicking) them. The threat, detected as "Trojan.Yontoo.1" by Russian security firm Doctor Web, is part of a wider scheme of adware for OS X that has "been increasing in number since the beginning of 2013," according to the company."

An anonymous reader writes "By using four different login combinations on the default Telnet port (root/root, admin/admin, root/[no password], and admin/[no password]), an anonymous researcher was able to log into (and upload a binary to) 'several hundred thousand unprotected devices' and run 'a super fast distributed port scanner' to scan the enitre IPv4 address space." From the report: "While playing around with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) we discovered an amazing number of open embedded devices on the Internet. Many of them are based on Linux and allow login to standard BusyBox with empty or default credentials. We used these devices to build a distributed port scanner to scan all IPv4 addresses. These scans include service probes for the most common ports, ICMP ping, reverse DNS and SYN scans. We analyzed some of the data to get an estimation of the IP address usage. All data gathered during our research is released into the public domain for further study."

chicksdaddy writes "To paraphrase a quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald: 'Rich countries aren't like everyone else. They have less malware.' That's the conclusion of a special Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft, anyway. The special supplement, released on Wednesday, investigated the links between rates of computer infections and a range of national characteristics including the relative wealth of a nation, observance of the rule of law and the rate of software piracy. The conclusion: cyber security (by Microsoft's definition: low rates of malware infection) correlated positively with many characteristics of wealthy nations – high Gross Income Per Capita, higher broadband penetration and investment in R&D and high rates of literacy. It correlated negatively with characteristics common in poorer nations – like demographic instability, political instability and lower levels of education.'"

Trailrunner7 writes "Up to a million Android users in China could be part of a large mobile botnet, according to research unveiled by Kingsoft Security, a Hong Kong-based security company, this week. The botnet has spread across phones running the Android operating system via Android.Troj.mdk, a Trojan that researchers said exists in upwards of 7,000 applications available from non-Google app marketplaces, including the popular Temple Run and Fishing Joy games." Update: 01/19 12:54 GMT by S : Changed summary to reflect that these apps didn't come from Google Play.

Trailrunner7 writes "A 24-year-old Algerian man remains in a Thai jail awaiting extradition to the United States, where he is suspected of masterminding more than $100 million in global bank heists using the ZeuS and SpyEye Trojans. Malaysian authorities believe they've apprehended the hacker Hamza Bendelladj, who they say has been jetsetting around the world using millions of dollars stolen online from various banks. He was arrested at a Bangkok airport en route from Malaysia to Egypt. The hacker had developed a considerable reputation as a major operator of ZeuS-powered botnets and bragged about his exploits"

chicksdaddy writes "The newly discovered Dexter malware is one of the few examples of a malicious program that targets point of sale terminals, but also communicates, botnet-like, with a command and control infrastructure. According to an analysis by Seculert, the custom malware has infected 'hundreds POS systems' including those operated by 'big-name retailers, hotels, restaurants and even private parking providers.' Now a detailed analysis by Verizon's RISK team suggests that Dexter may be a creation of a group responsible for the ubiquitous Zeus banking Trojan. By analyzing early variants of Dexter discovered in the wild, Verizon determined that the IP addresses used for Dexter's command and control were also used to host Zeus-related domains and several domains for Vobfus, also known as 'the porn worm,' which has been used to deliver the Zeus malware. Verizon also produced some tantalizing clues as to the identity of one individual who may be a part of the crew responsible for the malware. The RISK team linked the domain registration for a Dexter C&C server to an unusual online handle, 'hgfrfv,' that was used to post a number of suggestive help requests ('need help with decrypting a table encrypted with EncryptByKey') in online technical forums, where a live.com e-mail address was also provided. The account name was also linked to a shell account on the outsourcing web site freelancer.com, which lists 'hgfrfv' as an individual residing in the Russian Federation."

Last week, you asked questions of Eugene Kaspersky; below, find his answers on a range of topics, from the relationship of malware makers to malware hunters, to Kasperky Labs' relationship to the Putin government, as well as whitelisting vs. signature-based detection, Internet ID schemes, and the SCADA-specific operating system Kaspersky is working on. Spoiler: There are a lot of interesting facts here, as well as some teases.

angry tapir writes "Security researchers have identified a botnet controlled by its creators over the Tor anonymity network. It's likely that other botnet operators will adopt this approach, according to the team from vulnerability assessment and penetration testing firm Rapid7. The botnet is called Skynet and can be used to launch DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, generate Bitcoins — a type of virtual currency — using the processing power of graphics cards installed in infected computers, download and execute arbitrary files or steal login credentials for websites, including online banking ones. However, what really makes this botnet stand out is that its command and control (C&C) servers are only accessible from within the Tor anonymity network using the Tor Hidden Service protocol."

Freddybear writes "If your computer has been cracked and subverted for use by a botnet or other remote-access attack, is it legal for you to hack back into the system from which the attack originated? Over the last couple of years three legal scholars and bloggers have debated the question on The Volokh Conspiracy weblog. The linked webpage collects that debate into a coherent document. 'The debaters are:

• Stewart Baker, a former official at the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson with a large cybersecurity practice. Stewart Baker makes the policy case for counterhacking and challenges the traditional view of what remedies are authorized by the language of the CFAA.
• Orin Kerr, Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor of Law at George Washington School of Law, a former computer crimes prosecutor, and one of the most respected computer crime scholars. Orin Kerr defends the traditional view of the Act against both Stewart Baker and Eugene Volokh.
• Eugene Volokh, Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, founder of the Volokh Conspiracy, and a sophisticated technology lawyer, presents a challenge grounded in common law understandings of trespass and tort.'"

hypnosec writes "Having procured permission from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit managed to disrupt more than 500 different strains of malware in a bid to slow down the threats posed by the Nitol botnet. Microsoft, through an operation codenamed b70 (PDF), discovered Chinese retailers were involved in selling computers with a pirated version of Windows loaded with malware. Microsoft believes the malware could have entered the supply chain at any point, for the simple reason that a computer travels among companies that transport and resell the computer. The Windows 8 maker carried out a study focused on the Nitol botnet, through which it found nearly 20 percent of all the PCs that were purchased through insecure Chinese supply chains were infected with malware."

dgharmon writes with word from the BBC that "A U.S. hacker who sold access to thousands of hijacked home computers has been jailed for 30 months. Joshua Schichtel of Phoenix, Arizona, was sentenced for renting out more than 72,000 PCs that he had taken over using computer viruses." Time is cheap: Schichtel admitted to giving access to those 72,000 computers for $1500.

wiredmikey writes "It's been over a month since spam-spewing Grum botnet has been shut down, but spam experts say there hasn't been a noticeable impact on global spam volume. Symantec researchers at the time estimated that Grum was responsible for one-third of all spam being sent worldwide, and its takedown led to an immediate drop in global spam email volumes by as much as 15 to 20 percent. However, the drop was only temporary. While Grum had an estimated hundred thousand zombies sending spam, the machines were likely blocked for sending emails too frequently, or wound up on IP blacklists, said Andrew Conway, Cloudmark researcher. IP filtering is fast and cheap, and is a good first line of defense against spam, Conway said. Grum spam was easy to blacklist, and despite its size, most spam messages from the botnet probably never reached user inboxes."

tsu doh nimh writes "An examination of a control server seized in the recent takedown of the Grum spam botnet shows the crime machine was far bigger than most experts had assumed. A PHP panel used to control the botnet shows it had just shy of 200,000 systems sending spam when it was dismantled in mid-July. Researchers also found dozens of huge email lists, totaling more than 2.3 billion addresses, as well evidence it was used for phishing and malware attacks in addition to mailing pharmacy spam. Just prior to its takedown, Grum was responsible for sending about one in six spams worldwide."

Trailrunner7 writes "A team of researchers has discovered a weakness in the command-and-control infrastructure of one of the major DDoS toolkits, Dirt Jumper, that enables them to stop attacks that are in progress. The discovery gives the researchers the ability to access the back-end servers that control the attack tool, as well as the configuration server, and key insights into the way that the tool works and how attackers are using it. Dirt Jumper is not among the more well-known of the DDoS attack toolkits, but it's been in use for some time now and has a number of separate iterations. The bot evolved from the older RussKill bot over time, and various versions of the tool's binary code and back end configuration files have been made public. Researchers have watched as the bot has been used in attacks around the world against a variety of targets, and now they've been able to find a crack in the malware's control infrastructure."

CowboyRobot writes "Informatica64, a security research group, demonstrated the use of cached JavaScript to control computers connecting to a malicious proxy. 'The researchers found a variety of low-level criminals using their proxy server: fraudsters posing as British immigration officials offering work permits in hopes of stealing money and sensitive documents from their victims; a man pretending to be a pretty woman on a number of dating sites to con victims into sending money for a plane ticket; and another fraudster selling nonexistent Yorkshire Terriers.'"