Malware


Three Charged with Creating, Distributing Gozi Banking Malware

Charges will be brought today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against three men allegedly involved with creating and distributing the Gozi banking Trojan. Gozi infected more than a million computers worldwide, including a handful at NASA, leading to tens of millions of dollars in lost banking funds and damages to computer systems and networks.


The Java saga continued when unknown, and apparently well concealed goons exploited recent Java and Internet Explorer zero-days to compromise the website of the French-based, free-press advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders. The attack, which attempted to take advantage of the time-gulf that separates Oracle’s patch release from their users’ application of it, is part of a watering hole campaign also targeting Tibetan and Uygur human rights groups as well as Hong Kong and Taiwanese political parties and other non-governmental organizations.

With Skype expanding its reach with services designed for small businesses, and other messaging platforms such as Microsoft Windows Messenger shutting down, Skype is becoming an attractive target for malware writers.Reports surfaced last week of the Shylock financial malware spreading on Skype and yesterday, researchers reported the discovery of more malware propagating on Skype.  

A Canadian college student was expelled after reporting a vulnerability in the school’s Web site that potentially exposed private data on more than 250,000 students.The high-achieving computer science major, Hamed Al-Khabaz and another student, Ovidiu Mija, in November were developing a mobile app using Omnivox Web portal software when they discovered “sloppy coding” that could lead to a major data breach. Ominvox is used at hundreds of Canadian campuses, including theirs at Montreal’s Dawson College.

How many inconspicuous botnets are alive and siphoning banking credentials and real money from online accounts that get little to no attention? They feast on unwitting consumers using an array of available banking Trojans to steal legitimate log-in information and sell it to the highest bidder, often with great success because they got lost in the sea of similar campaigns. Researchers at Dutch security company Fox-IT recently took apart an average botnet running amok in the Netherlands called Pobelka, a Russian word that means whitewash (perhaps a euphemism for money laundering). The analysis paints a picture of the simplicity with which even a small criminal organization can spread malware for profit, virtually unscathed.