The departure of TeslaCrypt from the ransomware circle has gone and made waves in the cybercriminal world. Bad guys appear to be jumping ships in hopes of getting a chunk out of the share that was previously owned by TeslaCrypt. In line with this recent event, indicators are pointing to a new strong man in the ransomware game: CryptXXX.
Read More In the first four months of 2016, we have discovered new families and variants of ransomware, seen their vicious new routines, and witnessed threat actors behind these operations upping the ransomware game to new heights. All these developments further establish crypto-ransomware as a lucrative cybercriminal enterprise. As we predicted, this year is indeed shaping up to be the year of online extortion, and while the security industry may be doing an admirable job of keeping up with the latest new tactic and providing solutions, the not-so informed public and organizations may very well be on the receiving end of a crippling malware that can destroy personal and corporate files, as well as lead to huge financial losses.
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A small webhosting provider with servers in the Netherlands and Romania has been a hotbed of targeted attacks and advanced persistent threats (APT) since early 2015. Starting from May 2015 till today we counted over 100 serious APT incidents that originated from servers of this small provider. Pawn Storm used the servers for at least 80 high profile attacks against various governments in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Formally the Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting company is registered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). But from public postings on the Internet, it is apparent that the owner doesn’t really care about laws in UAE. In fact, Pawn Storm and another APT group, attacked the government of UAE using servers of the VPS provider through highly targeted credential phishing. Other threat actors like DustySky (also known as the Gaza hackers) are also regularly using the VPS provider to host their Command and Control (C&C) servers and to send spear phishing e-mails.
Read MoreThe evolution of crypto-ransomware in terms of behavior takes a step forward, and a creepy one at that. We have recently encountered a nasty crypto-ransomware family called JIGSAW. Reminiscent to the horror film Saw, this malware toys with users by locking and deleting their files incrementally. To an extent, it instills fear and pressures users into paying the ransom. It even comes with an image of Saw’s very own Billy the puppet, and the red digital clock to boot.
Read MoreWe have recently caught sight of a mobile ransomware distributed by fake adult websites. It not only locks the device screen and display a warning supposedly coming from law enforcement—a tactic reminiscent of the Police Trojan that plagued desktops before—it also activates the unit’s front facing camera to add to its scare tactic. However, while it has routines unique to mobile ransomware, it also has a particular set of weaknesses that stand out.
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