Tag Archives: malware

Two never-before-seen tools, from same group, infect air-gapped devices

The evolution of the kit from 2019 and the one from three years later underscores a growing sophistication by GoldenJackal developers. The first generation provided a full suite of capabilities, including: GoldenDealer, a component that delivers malicious executables to air-gapped systems over USB drives GoldenHowl, a backdoor that contains various modules for a mix of… Read More »

Thousands of Linux systems infected by stealthy malware since 2021

This Reddit comment posted to the CentOS subreddit is typical. An admin noticed that two servers were infected with a cryptocurrency hijacker with the names perfcc and perfctl. The admin wanted help investigating the cause. “I only became aware of the malware because my monitoring setup alerted me to 100% CPU utilization,” the admin wrote… Read More »

11 million devices infected with botnet malware hosted in Google Play

reader comments 13 Five years ago, researchers made a grim discovery—a legitimate Android app in the Google Play market that was surreptitiously made malicious by a library the developers used to earn advertising revenue. With that, the app was infected with code that caused 100 million infected devices to connect to attacker-controlled servers and download… Read More »

Hackers infect ISPs with malware that steals customers’ credentials

Getty Images reader comments 24 Malicious hackers likely working on behalf of the Chinese government have been exploiting a high-severity zero-day vulnerability that allowed them to infect at least four US-based ISPs with malware that steals credentials used by downstream customers, researchers said Tuesday. The vulnerability resides in the Versa Director, a virtualization platform that… Read More »

Novel technique allows malicious apps to escape iOS and Android guardrails

Getty Images reader comments 13 Phishers are using a novel technique to trick iOS and Android users into installing malicious apps that bypass safety guardrails built by both Apple and Google to prevent unauthorized apps. Both mobile operating systems employ mechanisms designed to help users steer clear of apps that steal their personal information, passwords,… Read More »

Mac and Windows users infected by software updates delivered over hacked ISP

reader comments 49 Hackers delivered malware to Windows and Mac users by compromising their Internet service provider and then tampering with software updates delivered over unsecure connections, researchers said. The attack, researchers from security firm Volexity said, worked by hacking routers or similar types of device infrastructure of an unnamed ISP. The attackers then used… Read More »

Mysterious family of malware hid in Google Play for years

reader comments 21 A mysterious family of Android malware with a demonstrated history of effectively concealing its myriad spying activities has once again been found in Google Play after more than two years of hiding in plain sight. The apps, disguised as file-sharing, astronomy, and cryptocurrency apps, hosted Mandrake, a family of highly intrusive malware… Read More »

Law enforcement operation takes aim at an often-overlooked cybercrime linchpin

Getty Images reader comments 13 An international cast of law enforcement agencies has struck a blow at a cybercrime linchpin that’s as obscure as it is instrumental in the mass-infection of devices: so-called droppers, the sneaky software that’s used to install ransomware, spyware, and all manner of other malware. Europol said Wednesday it made four… Read More »

Mystery malware destroys 600,000 routers from a single ISP during 72-hour span

Getty Images reader comments 100 One day last October, subscribers to an ISP known as Windstream began flooding message boards with reports their routers had suddenly stopped working and remained unresponsive to reboots and all other attempts to revive them. “The routers now just sit there with a steady red light on the front,” one… Read More »

Hacker free-for-all fights for control of home and office routers everywhere

reader comments 2 Cybercriminals and spies working for nation-states are surreptitiously coexisting inside the same compromised name-brand routers as they use the devices to disguise attacks motivated both by financial gain and strategic espionage, researchers said. In some cases, the coexistence is peaceful, as financially motivated hackers provide spies with access to already compromised routers… Read More »