Malware

As Microsoft’s crusade against the Rustock botnet continues, a new article from Brian Krebs claims the formerly prolific botnet’s author may be a self-described mathematician and software engineer who once sought employment from Google.

ED: Gmail Hackers Conned Victims for MonthsDEK: An independent security researcher says that victims of the account takeovers were repeatedly phished over almost a year by attackers believed to be located in China. An independent security researcher who was among the first to investigate a large scale phishing attack aimed at U.S. government and military personnel says that attackers controlled victim accounts for months and repeatedly phished victims during that time. Mila Parkour, a Washington D.C. based independent says that victims of the account takeovers were repeatedly phished over almost a year by attackers believed to be located in China. Victims of the attack included government and military personnel in the U.S. and Asian nations, as well as human rights activists and journalists in China and elsewhere, Google said on Wednesday. According to Parkour, the group or individuals responsible for the attack controlled those accounts for more than a year and repeatedly targeted both the legitimate account owner and his or her associates during that time. The attackers used spoofed e-mail addresses and information harvested from the victims’ accounts to engage in “mini conversations” with their victims, Parkour said. “They used personal knowledge for some phishes…they were very persistent and invasive,” she said. Among other things, the attackers continued to try to harvest online credentials from victims – user names and passwords – using the same technique they used, successfully, to gain access to- and control over the users gmail account. “They would send a new message with the same type (of) password harvesting technique. Sometimes even the same message sometimes (a) new (message),” said Parkour, who described herself as a IT administrator who researches malicious programs as a hobby. Google said in a blog post on Wednesday that it had disrupted the campaign, which it traced to  Jinan, China. The campaign affected hundreds of Gmail users, using malware and phishing attacks to harvest user login credentials. The campaign appears to have been designed to monitor the content of users’ email correspondence.An independent security researcher who was among the first to investigate a large scale phishing attack aimed at U.S. government and military personnel says that attackers controlled victim accounts for months and repeatedly phished victims during that time.

Search giant Google has again sounded the alarm about sophisticated attacks emanating from mainland China and targeting officials within the U.S. and Asian governments, as well as human rights activists and journalists. Samples of some of the messages posted on an independent researcher’s blog indicate that personnel in the Department of State as well as the Department of Defense were targeted.

The Pentagon is compiling a list of offensive cyber-weapons capable of deliberately crippling or destroying an adversary’s critical infrastructure according to a recent report in the Washington Post.This collection of cyber weapons is part of a broader list of weapons approved by the Pentagon for use against America’s enemies.

A new attack on Facebook has been making the rounds this week, thanks in part to the social networking service’s ‘Like’ feature – and both Mac and Windows users are vulnerable.

Researchers have identified a second large batch of apps in the Android Market that have been infected with the DroidDream malware, estimating that upwards of 30,000 users have downloaded at least one of the more than 30 infected apps. Google has removed the apps from the market.

Apple on Tuesday shipped the promised update to help remove the MacDefender malware, and in a surprise move, also added functionality to Mac OS X that will now check for new malware definitions daily.