• Tag Archives computer news
  • Bredo Banking Malware Campaign Targets Bank of America Customers

    Last month the researchers at AppRiver has noticed enormous volumes of traffic through their data centers, with the peaks of traffic reaching three or four times than their normal network traffic.

    They caught and blocked a malware campaign that was using the new and novel tactics designed specifically to beat the filtering engines.

    Last Wednesday the company experienced huge spam traffic i.e. 10 to 12 times the normal amount of their normal routine traffic. “These spikes have been driven by a tremendous increase in the number of incoming messages being sent with viruses attached.” and some user experienced delays in sending and receiving mail.

    They found the malware campaign, distributing a Financial Trojan designed to target, the Bank of America customers, known as ‘Bredo virus’, capable of stealing information such as Credit Card Numbers, Banking credentials, user’s keystrokes.

    AppRiver said that ‘The software may also have abilities to further infect a system by downloading more malware on to the machine’ and added that, ‘running through a variety of virus scanners showed that only 11 of 51 antivirus vendors were classifying it as malware.’

    The Bredo botnet was first detected in May 2009 and is capable of propagating through malicious e-mails that includes malware attachments which would infect a computer when opened, effectively turning the computer into another zombie controlled by the botnet.

    In October 2010, the Dutch law enforcement agents seized 143 LeaseWeb servers used as command & the control center of botnet, but were not able to successfully vanish it completely.

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  • John McAfee ‘grateful’ Intel is dropping his name from ‘worst software on the planet’

    John McAfee

    John McAfee is glad that Intel is dropping his name from McAfee’s antivirus software. 

    The UpTake: Intel is dropping the McAfee name from the antivirus software brand. It’s infamous founder, John McAfee, couldn’t be happier.

    John McAfee is finally glad to be rid of his embarrassing association with McAfee antivirus software.

    Intel, which acquired McAfee Inc. in 2011, is dropping the McAfee brand in favor of Intel Security. McAfee founded the eponymous global software security firm in 1987, but left the company in 1994. When we last checked in with the gonzo antivirus pioneer, he was being evicted from his luxury Portland apartment and employing biker bodyguards.

    His response to Intel’s rebranding was pure McAfee: “I am now everlastingly grateful to Intel for freeing me from this terrible association with the worst software on the planet,” he told the BBC. “These are not my words, but the words of millions of irate users. My elation at Intel’s decision is beyond words.”

    Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced the name change at the International Consumer Electronics Show this week. It’s not clear that McAfee’s shenanigans had anything to do with the re-branding.

    McAfee’s disdain for the product bearing his name is well known.

    “Although I’ve had nothing to do with this company for over 15 years, I still get volumes of mail asking how do I uninstall this software,” McAfee said in a salty parody video released in June called “How to Uninstall McAfee Antivirus Software.” Warning: the video, embedded below, contains mature themes and John McAfee.

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  • Java Bot MalwareLaunching DDos Attacks from infected Machines

    These days botnets are all over the news. In simple terms, a botnet is a group of computers networked together, running a piece of malicious software that allows them to be controlled by a remote attacker.

    A major target for most of the malware is still Windows, but the growing market of Mac OS X, Linux and Smartphones, is also giving a solid reason to cyber criminals to focus.

    Recently, Kaspersky Lab has detected another cross-platform Java-Bot, capable of infecting computers running Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that has Java Runtime Environment installed.

    Last year, Zoltan Balazs – CTO at MRG Effitas submitted the samples of malicious Java application for analysis to Kaspersky Lab and they identified it as HEUR:Backdoor.Java.Agent.a.

    According to researchers, to compromise computers, Java-Bot is exploiting a previously known critical Java vulnerability CVE-2013-2465 that was patched in last June. The vulnerability persists in Java 7 u21 and earlier versions.
    CVE-2013-2465 description says:

    •  An unspecified vulnerability in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) component in Oracle Java SE 7 Update 21 and earlier, 6 Update 45 and earlier, and 5.0 Update 45 and earlier, and OpenJDK 7, allows remote attackers to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability via unknown vectors related to 2D.

    Once the bot has infected a computer, for automatic initialization the malware copies itself into the home directory, and registers itself with system startup programs. The Malware is designed to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks from infected computers.

    It uses the following methods to start it based on the target operating system:

    •     For Windows – HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
    •     Mac OS – the standard Mac OS service launch is used
    •     For Linux – /etc/init.d/

    The malware authors used Zelix Klassmaster Obfuscator (encryption) to make the analysis more difficult.  It creates a separate key for the classes developed due to which analysis of all classes has to be done to get the decryption keys.

    The botnet executable contains an encrypted configuration file for the Mac OS ‘launchd service’. It also encrypts internal working methodology of malware.

    The malware uses PricBot an open framework for implementing communication via IRC. Zombie computers, then report to an Internet relay chat (IRC) channel that acts as a Command-and-control server.

    The Botnet supports HTTP, UDP protocols for flooding (DDoS attack) a target whose details i.e. Address, port number, attack duration, number of threads to be used are received from the IRC channel.

    Users should update their Java software to the latest release of Java 7 update 51 of 14 January 2014, can be found on Oracle’s Java website. The next scheduled security update for Java is on 14 April 2014.

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  • Oracle to issue huge security patch addressing 36 Java vulnerabilities

    ENTERPRISE VENDOR Oracle will issue its first patch update of 2014 on Tuesday and it just so happens that it’ll be one of its biggest ever that includes a slew of security patches, many of which address vulnerabilities in Java.

    The Critical Patch Update will address 144 flaws in hundreds of Oracle products, 36 of which apply to vulnerabilities in Java SE, including 34 that are bugs that can be exploited remotely by an attacker without requiring authentication.

    “Some of the vulnerabilities addressed in this Critical Patch Update affect multiple products”, Oracle said in its pre-release announcement. “Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update fixes as soon as possible.”

    Five of the security fixes will apply to Oracle Database Server. One of these vulnerabilities might be remotely exploitable without authentication, meaning it could be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.

    The patch update will be released on 14 January for Oracle products and components including JavaFX, versions 2.2.45 and earlier, Java JDK and JRE, versions 5.0u55, 6u65, 7u45 and earlier, and Java SE Embedded, versions 7u45 and earlier.

    The highest CVSS 2.0 Base Score for vulnerabilities in Oracle’s Critical Patch Update is 10.0 for Java SE, Java SE Embedded, and JRockit of Oracle Java SE, MySQL Enterprise Monitor of Oracle MySQL, Oracle FLEXCUBE Private Banking of Oracle Financial Services Software and Oracle WebCenter Sites of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

    Security firm Qualys’ CTO Wolfgang Kandek warned that plug-ins like Java are one of the main threat vectors as more companies are being infected through web based attacks.

    “One needs to pay attention to the browser plug-ins, and in that class, the most important is Oracle’s Java,” Kandek said. “Java just suffered a widely published attack during the Yahoo Ad-based attacks from [December to January 2014], where the Magnitude exploit kit was used to deliver malware to users that were running an outdated version of Java.”

    He added that Oracle’s critical patch update will “further tighten its security parameters”.

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  • Windows 9 to be released in April 2015

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    If you compare how Windows 8 has been doing until now to how Windows 7 did in its first two years of existence, you will come to the conclusion that it did not do as well.

    Some say it failed as much as Windows Vista did, and while there are certainly similarities between the two operating systems, it is an unfair comparison.

    While Vista and 8 shipped after hugely successful Windows versions, XP and 7 to be precise, the why they failed is different.

    As far as Windows 8 is concerned, it failed because it concentrated too much on the creation of a unified platform, on mobile and touch features, and not enough on the desktop part of the system.

    In addition, decisions to make live for desktop users difficult, by removing the start menu or forcing them to start on the Start Screen interface, added to the frustration of many users.

    And then there is the slowing of the PC market, largely attributed by a shift to mobile and consumption, and by the fact that PC hardware has not seen any evolution in recent time.

    Microsoft did restore some features with Windows 8.1, and the upgrade is seen by many as a baby-step in the right direction.

    What we do know for certain is that a service-pack like upgrade will be released in April 2014 for Windows 8.1. It is not clear if it will introduce any new features or modifications to the operating system.

    The update could however be the last for Windows 8, as Microsoft could release Windows 9 as early as April 2015 according to Paul Thurrott.

    It is a rumor at this point in time, but according to Paul’s unnamed sources, Windows Threshold could indeed be Windows 9.

    Again, this is a rumor and subject to change. It would however make sense to move away from the Windows 8 name as soon as possible due to its performance up to this point. It would also keep the “every second Windows is a good Windows” rule alive, provided that Microsoft is improving the experience for desktop users on Windows 9.

    Two of the previous rumors in regards to Windows Threshold are that it will bring back a full start menu, and that it will allow users to run apps on the desktop in windows.

    According to Paul, Microsoft will deliver three milestone releases prior to the public availability of Windows 9 in April 2015. The company won’t release an early alpha version on this year’s Build conference though as work won’t have started yet on that version.

    Microsoft has a year to deliver Windows 9. Some may say that this is not a long time, and that it is unlikely that Windows 9 will ship with many major changes and feature additions in comparison to Windows 8.

    It is however enough time to further modify the operating system to make it more appealing to desktop users.

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