Like any other year, 2015 had its mix of ups and downs in the world of security. A fine line exists between the threats that we face and the solutions we have at our disposal; any slip-up on the part of defenders can make an existing problem that much worse. The coming year will not…
Read MoreSex sells, and nowhere is that more true than the Chinese mobile landscape. Porn-themed malware has been hitting Android users in China, Japan, and Taiwan in recent weeks.
These malicious apps are distributed via SEO-optimized fake websites, with keywords targeting hot scandals and affairs used. These sites pretend to be porn video websites, and all lead to various malicious apps being downloaded.
Read MorePawn Storm has a long history of targeting government agencies and private organizations to steal sensitive information. Our most recent findings show that they targeted the international investigation team of the MH17 plane crash from different sides.
The Dutch Safety Board (known as Onderzoeksraad) became a target of the cyber-espionage group before and after the safety board published their detailed report on the MH17 incident on October 13, 2015. We believe that a coordinated attack from several sides was launched to get unauthorized access to sensitive material of the investigation conducted by Dutch, Malaysian, Australian, Belgian, and Ukrainian authorities.
Read MoreSeveral months ago, we disclosed that Pawn Storm was using a then-undiscovered zero-day Java vulnerability to carry out its attacks. At the time, we noted that a separate vulnerability was used to bypass the click-to-play protection that is in use by Java. This second vulnerability has now been patched by Oracle as part of its regular quarterly update.
Click-to-play requires the user to click the space where the Java app would normally be displayed before it is executed. In effect, it asks the user if they are really sure they want to run any Java code.
Bypassing click-to-play protection allows for malicious Java code to run without any alert windows being shown. This was quite useful in Pawn Storm, as it used exploits targeting these vulnerabilities to carry out targeted attacks against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and the White House earlier this year.
Read MoreOur analysis of the Adobe Flash zero-day vulnerability used in the latest Pawn Storm campaign reveals that the previous mitigation techniques introduced by Adobe were not enough to secure the platform. Used in Pawn Storm to target certain foreign affairs ministries, the vulnerability identified as CVE-2015-7645 represents a significant change in tactics from previous exploits. It is…
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