App Stores that Formerly Coddled ZNIU Found Distributing a New iXintpwn/YJSNPI Variant
by Lilang Wu, Ju Zhu, and Moony Li We covered iXintpwn/YJSNPI in a previous blog post and looked into how it renders an iOS device unresponsive by overflowing it with icons. This threat comes in the form of an unsigned profile that crashes the standard application that manages the iOS home screen when installed. The […] more…Android Click-Fraud App Repurposed as DDoS Botnet
The McAfee Mobile Research Team tracks the behavior of Android click-fraud apps. We have detected multiple implementations, including recent examples on Google Play in 2016 and Clicker.BN last month. These threats are characterized by a common behavior: They appear innocuous but in the background they perform HTTP requests (simulating clicks) on paid “advertainment” to make […] more…Android Click-Fraud Apps Briefly Return to Google Play
Click-fraud apps frequently appear on Google Play and third-party markets. They are sometimes hard to identify because the malicious behavior that simulates clicks is similar to the behavior of many legitimate applications (using common API calls and permissions). Further, part of the malicious code does not reside in the original malware and comes from a […] more…GhostClicker Adware is a Phantomlike Android Click Fraud
By Echo Duan and Roland Sun We’ve uncovered a pervasive auto-clicking adware from as much as 340 apps from Google Play, one of which, named “Aladdin’s Adventure’s World”, was downloaded 5 million times. These adware-embedded applications include recreational games, device performance utilities like cleaners and boosters, and file managers, QR and barcode scanners, multimedia recorders […] more…Spam Campaign Delivers Cross-platform Remote Access Trojan Adwind
Cybercriminals are opportunists. As other operating systems (OS) are more widely used, they, too, would diversify their targets, tools, and techniques in order to cash in on more victims. That’s the value proposition of malware that can adapt and cross over different platforms. And when combined with a business model that can commercially peddle this […] more…SLocker Mobile Ransomware Starts Mimicking WannaCry
by Ford Qin Early last month, a new variant of mobile ransomware SLocker (detected by Trend Micro as ANDROIDOS_SLOCKER.OPST) was detected, copying the GUI of the now-infamous WannaCry. The SLocker family is one of the oldest mobile lock screen and file-encrypting ransomware and used to impersonate law enforcement agencies to convince victims to pay their […] more…Security Risks Arise From Insecure Implementations of HTML5 postMessage()API
In this post we are going to have a look at the security risks arising due to insecure implementation of the HTML5 postMessage()API. Before we discuss how this cross-domain messaging API works, we must understand a few important concepts such as the same-origin policy and security risks associated with cross-origin communications. Same-origin policy The origin […] more…Ztorg: money for infecting your smartphone
This research started when we discovered an infected Pokémon GO guide in Google Play. It was there for several weeks and was downloaded more than 500,000 times. We detected the malware as Trojan.AndroidOS.Ztorg.ad. After some searching, I found some other similar infected apps that were being distributed from the Google Play Store. The first of […] more…Cerber Version 6 Shows How Far the Ransomware Has Come (and How Far it’ll Go)
Additional analysis/insights by Alfredo Oliveira A little over a year after its first variants were found in the wild, Cerber (Detected by Trend Micro as RANSOM_CERBER family) now has the reputation for being the most prolific family of ransomware in the threat landscape. Since it first emerged in Russian underground marketplaces in March, 2016, Cerber has […] more…Spam and phishing in Q1 2017
Spam: quarterly highlights Spam from the Necurs botnet We wrote earlier about a sharp increase in the amount of spam with malicious attachments, mainly Trojan encryptors. Most of that spam was coming from the Necurs botnet, which is currently considered the world’s largest spam botnet. However, in late December 2016, the network’s activity almost ceased […] more…Spora Ransomware Infects ‘Offline’—Without Talking to Control Server
Spora is a ransomware family that encrypts victims’ files and demands money to decrypt the files. It has infected many computers in a short time due to a huge spam campaign. It has a very special feature—to work offline. Propagation vector The spam campaign carries a .zip file, which contains an HTA (HTML Application) file to […] more…Spam and phishing in 2016
The year in figures According to Kaspersky Lab, in 2016: The proportion of spam in email flows was 58.31%, which is 3.03 percentage points more than in 2015. 62.16% of spam emails were no more than 2 KB in size. 12.08% of spam was sent from the US. Trojan.Win32.Bayrob was the most popular malware family […] more…Tracking the Decline of Top Exploit Kits
The latter half of 2016 saw a major shift in the exploit kit landscape, with many established kits suddenly dropping operations or switching business models. Angler, which has dominated the market since 2015, suddenly went silent. We tracked 3.4 million separate Angler attacks on our clients in the first quarter of 2016, and the rate […] more…Mobile Ransomware: How to Protect Against It
In our previous post, we looked at how malware can lock devices, as well as the scare tactics used to convince victims to pay the ransom. Now that we know what bad guys can do, we’ll discuss the detection and mitigation techniques that security vendors can use to stop them. By sharing these details with other […] more…IT threat evolution Q3 2016. Statistics
Download the full report (PDF) Statistics All the statistics used in this report were obtained using Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), a distributed antivirus network that works with various anti-malware protection components. The data was collected from KSN users who agreed to provide it. Millions of Kaspersky Lab product users from 213 countries and territories worldwide […] more…The Last Key on The Ring – Server Solutions to Ransomware
This entry is the last part of a four-part blog series discussing the different techniques ransomware uses to affect users and organizations. These techniques show that the best way to mitigate the risks brought about by this threat is to implement multiple layers of protection in different aspects of an enterprise network: from the gateway, […] more…More information
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