Exploit kits have long been part of a cybercriminal’s arsenal. One of the most notorious exploit kits in recent years is the Blackhole Exploit Kit. Coverage over this particular exploit kit reached a fevered pitch with the arrest of its author in 2013. The Blackhole Exploit Kit may have met its demise, but this hasn’t…
Read More2013 was another year marked by many changes – for good and bad – in the threat landscape. Some threats waned, others grew significantly, while completely new threats emerged and made life difficult for users. What remained constant, however, were the threats against the safety of digital information. In this entry, we present some of…
Read More2013 was a year of change in the spam landscape. The volume of spam increased from 2012. We witnessed the decline of a previously-successful exploit kit. The old became new again, thanks to different techniques used by spammers. While we still saw traditional types of spam, we also saw several “improvements” which allowed spammers to…
Read MoreSoon after Paunch was arrested, we found that the flow of spam campaigns going to sites with the Blackhole Exploit Kit (BHEK) had slowed down considerably. Instead, we saw an increase in messages with a malicious attachment. Recently, however, we came across rather unusual spam samples that combines characteristics of both attacks. Figure 1. Spammed…
Read MoreThe past few weeks have seen the ransomware CryptoLocker emerge as a significant threat for many users. Our monitoring of this threat has revealed details on how it spreads, specifically its connection to spam and ZeuS. However, it looks there is more to the emergence of this thread than initially discovered. We have identified one…
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