As we are certain about some aspects of life, the same can be said about cybercrime. Tax Day draws closer in the U.S., and as millions of Americans are in the process of filing their taxes, cybercriminals are also stepping in to make this task profitable for them and difficult for their victims. We have seen recent incidents of organizations falling for business email compromise (BEC) schemes related to tax filing; now, it looks like online extortionists have joined the fray as well.
Read MoreOn March 18, Google published a security advisory for a critical vulnerability CVE-2015-1805 that applied to rooting apps. This bug allows malicious apps to gain “root” access to all Android phones below kernel version 3.18. This can greatly affect devices that no longer receive patches, or those with long rollout time. Initially, this flaw has been tagged as ‘medium’ in terms of severity. However, a zero-day exploit was found out that showed the vulnerability could still be exploited successfully, compromising the security of the device. As such, the level of severity was changed to ‘critical.’
Read MoreAs if encrypting files and holding them hostage is not enough, cybercriminals who create and spread crypto-ransomware are now resorting to causing blue screen of death (BSOD) and putting their ransom notes at system startup—as in, even before the operating system loads. Imagine turning on your computer and instead of the usual Windows icon loading, you get a flashing red and white screen with a skull-and-crossbones instead.
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A newly-discovered information theft campaign in India has stolen passport scans, photo IDs, and tax information from 160 Indian military officers, military attaches stationed in the said country, consultants, and resellers. Some evidence suggests that the attackers are based out of Pakistan, although no evidence suggests ties to the government.
This operation was not particularly sophisticated, however it was still able to acquire sensitive information that was probably acquired from restricted sources within the Indian government. This shows that targeted attacks don’t need to be well-planned operations backed by a big budget and sufficient resources. What attackers may lack in technical sophistication, they can make up for through tenacity, persistence, and clever social engineering.
Read MoreThe thing about takedowns is that these do not necessarily wipe out the cybercriminal operations. In 2014, the ZeroAccess takedown has affected the botnet’s click fraud operation, but its infections continued to soar. DRIDEX’s case is similar as it continues to figure predominantly in the threat landscape despite takedown of its multiple command-and-control servers last October 2015.
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