While investigating a cryptocurrency exchange attacked by Lazarus, we made an unexpected discovery. The victim had been infected with the help of a trojanized cryptocurrency trading application, which had been recommended to the company over email. Read Full Article
Coinvault, the court case
Today, after almost 3 years of waiting, it was finally the day of the trial. In the Netherlands, where the whole case took place, the hearings are open to the public. Meaning anyone who is interested can visit. And it was quite busy. Read Full Article
In cryptoland, trust can be costly
While the legal status of cryptocurrencies and laws to regulate them continue to be hammered out, scammers are busy exploiting the digital gold rush. Besides hacking cryptocurrency exchanges, exploiting smart-contract vulnerabilities, and deploying malicious miners, cybercriminals are also resorting to more traditional social-engineering methods that can reap millions of dollars. Read Full Article
To crypt, or to mine – that is the question
Way back in 2013 our malware analysts spotted the first malicious samples related to the Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Rakhni family. That was the starting point for this long-lived Trojan family, which is still functioning to this day. Now the criminals have decided to add a new feature to their creation – a mining capability. Read Full Article
Ransomware and malicious crypto miners in 2016-2018
This report will examine what is hopefully ransomware’s last breath, in detail, along with the rise of mining. The report covers the period April 2017 to March 2018, and compares it with April 2016 – March 2017. Read Full Article
IT threat evolution Q1 2018
In January, we uncovered a sophisticated mobile implant Skygofree that provides attackers with remote control of infected Android devices. Network worm OlympicDestroyer attacked on the Olympic infrastructure just before the opening of the games in February. Read Full Article
Tens of thousands per Gram
In late 2017, information appeared on specialized resources about a Telegram ICO to finance the launch of its own blockchain platform. The lack of information provided fertile ground for scammers: the rumors prompted mailshots seemingly from official representatives of the platform, inviting people to take part in the ICO and purchase tokens. Read Full Article
Pocket cryptofarms
In recent months, the topic of cryptocurrency has been a permanent news fixture — the value of digital money has been see-sawing spectacularly. Such pyrotechnics could hardly have escaped the attention of scammers, which is why cryptocurrency fluctuations have gone hand in hand with all kinds of stories. These include hacked exchanges, Bitcoin and Monero ransoms, and, of course, hidden mining. Read Full Article
Mining is the new black
Last year we published a story revealing the rise of miners across the globe. At the time we had discovered botnets earning millions of USD. We knew this was just the beginning of the story, which turned out to develop rapidly. Read Full Article
Nhash: petty pranks with big finances
In an earlier publication we noted that cybercriminals were making use of social engineering to install this sort of software on users’ computers. This time, we’d like to dwell more on how exactly the computers of gullible users start working for cybercriminals. Read Full Article