Together with Thorsten Holz, I recently published a paper on fast flux botnet behaviors, "As the Net Churns: Fast-Flux Botnet Observations," based on data we gathered in our ATLAS platform. Fast flux service networks utilize botnets to distribute the web servers to the infected PCs... One of the most well known fast flux botnets has been the Storm Worm botnet, which uses the zombies to spam, send out new enticements to infect users, and to host the malicious website which delivers the malcode. more
Rather than blathering on to the blogosphere about the superficial features of Google's new Chrome browser I've spent some time studying the available material and [re]writing a comprehensive Wikipedia article on the subject which I intend for anyone to be free to reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license rather than Wikipedia's usual strong copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). This unusual freedom is extended in order to foster learning and critical analysis, particularly in terms of security. more
A couple of years ago I started a mailing list where folks not necessarily involved with the vetted, trusted, closed and snobbish circles of cyber crime fighting (some founded by me) could share information and be informed of threats. In this post I explore some of the history behind information sharing online, and explain the concept behind the botnets mailing list... we may not be able to always share our resources, but it is time to change the tide of the cyber crime war, and strategize. One of the strategies we need to use, or at least try, is public information sharing of "lesser evils" already in the public domain. more
There are more than just blue, black and white hat hackers. There are a few more types of folks out there that don't fit into the above categories. This article is taken from Stratfor with some commentary by myself... Many of the hackers described in my previous post are also coders, or "writers," who create viruses, worms, Trojans, bot protocols and other destructive "malware" tools used by hackers... more
Well, given the amount of malicious JavaScript, malware, and other possibilities to use Facebook (and other similar social networking platforms) for abuse, I certainly wouldn't categorize this news as a "clever move"... In fact, I foresee this as an extraordinarily short-sighted move with far-reaching security implications -- which will allow the levels of malicious abuse to reach new heights. more
The Storm worm has gotten a lot of press this year, with a lot of the coverage tending toward the apocalyptic. There's no question that it's one of the most successful pieces of malware to date, but just how successful is it? Last weekend, Brandon Enright of UC San Diego gave a informal talk at the Toorcon conference in which he reported on his analysis of the Storm botnet. According to his quite informative slides, Storm has evolved quite a lot over the past year... more
A story... ZZZ Telemarketing (not a real name) is locked in a heated fight with their bitter rival, YYY Telemarketing (also not a real name), to win a very large lead generation contract with Customer X. Customer X has decided to run a test pitting the two companies against each other for a week to see who can generate the most leads. The ZZZ CEO has said to his staff that it is "do or die" for the company. If they fail to win the contract, they will have to shut down -- they need to do "whatever it takes" to win over YYY. A ZZZ staffer discovers that part of why YYY has consistently underbid them is because they are using SIP trunks to reduce their PSTN connection costs. But the staffer also discovers that YYY is using very cheap voice service providers who run over the public Internet with no security... more
U.S. military service members around the country have reported receiving unsolicited smartwatches by mail, triggering warnings from the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID). more
In a potentially damaging cybersecurity revelation, researchers from the cybersecurity company Eclypsium have identified a hidden mechanism in the firmware of motherboards manufactured by Taiwanese company Gigabyte. more
The U.S. government has declared criminal charges, economic sanctions, and a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of a Russian citizen, Mikhail Matveev. Accused of a series of ransomware attacks, Matveev's alleged operations, known as Babuk, have targeted entities such as the D.C. police, an airline, and other American industries. more
The United States Department of Justice has announced that it has neutralized a global network of computers compromised by malware called "Snake," which the U.S. government attributes to a unit within Center 16 of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). more
A group of companies, including Microsoft, have collaborated to launch a major action to disrupt the use of cracked, legacy copies of the security tool Cobalt Strike which cybercriminals have abused to deploy ransomware. more
ChatGPT, the newly released language model, has quickly gained popularity and is used for various tasks, from automation to music composition. While having useful features like fast and easy-to-use code examples, it also has the ability to create sophisticated malware without malicious code. more
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