Web threats

Almost anyone can fall victim to a DDoS attack. They are relatively cheap and easy to organize, and can be highly effective if reliable protection is not in place. Based on analysis of the data obtained from open sources, we managed to find out the current cost of a DDoS attack on the black market. We also established what exactly the cybercriminals behind DDoS attacks offer their customers.

2016 was the year of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) with major disruptions in terms of technology, attack scale and impact on our daily life. In fact, the year ended with massive DDoS attacks unseen before, leveraging Mirai botnet technology.

In addition to the basic methods and technologies developed to protect corporate networks, there are interactive methods of protection that not only detect an intruder in the infrastructure but also, under certain conditions, receive real-time information about their activities in the corporate network.

2016 was a tense and turbulent year in cyberspace – from the massive IoT botnets and ransomware to targeted cyberespionage attacks, financial theft, ‘hacktivism’ and more. Kaspersky Lab’s Review of the Year and Statistics provide a detailed review – you can read the Executive Summary here.

From November 8 to 12, websites of some of the largest Russian banks fell victim to heavy DDoS attacks. Initially, it was no indication of anything unusual – all well-known banks get attacked from time to time – but further developments have evolved in the manner that allowed us to suggest a high level of organization in regards to the series of attacks.

Yet another year has flown past and, as far as notable infosec happenings are concerned, this is one for the history books. Drama, intrigue and exploits have plagued 2016 and, as we take stock of some of the more noteworthy stories, we once again cast our gaze forward to glean the shapes of the 2017 threat landscape.

Our research shows that, over the last few years, the holiday period which starts on so-called Black Friday was marked by an increase in phishing and other types of attacks, which suggests that the pattern will be repeated this year.

The most popular mobile Trojan in the third quarter of 2016 was Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Svpeng.q. During the quarter, the number of users attacked by it grew almost eightfold.

Interesting trend this quarter was the increased activity of DDoS botnets in Western Europe. For the first time in a year the TOP 10 most attacked countries included three Western European countries – Italy, France and Germany.

Earlier today we became aware of a malicious website delivering Petya through the Hunter exploit kit. While there is nothing special about yet another exploit kit page, this one caught our attention because it mimics the index page of our sinkhole systems.

We encountered a gratuitous act of violence against Android users. By simply viewing their favorite news sites over their morning coffee users can end up downloading last-browser-update.apk, a banking Trojan detected by Kaspersky Lab solutions as Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Svpeng.q.

In the second quarter of 2016, Kaspersky Lab’s web antivirus detected 16,119,489 unique malicious objects: scripts, exploits, executable files, etc. 54,539,948 unique URLs were recognized as malicious by web antivirus components.

Bankers and encryptors, ransomware and spyware, old and new exploits; APT attacks, ATM infection, spear phishing and fraud targeting large numbers of users – cybercriminals continue their hunt for money and information

In Q2 2016, the geography of DDoS attacks narrowed to 70 countries, with China accounting for 77.4% of attacks. In fact, 97.3% of the targeted resources were located in just 10 countries. The longest DDoS attack in the second quarter of 2016 lasted for 291 hours, which significantly exceeded the Q1 maximum of 197 hours.

Recently we revealed that a threat actors exploited social networks to spread a Trojan that captures a victim’s entire browser traffic. Approximately 10,000 Facebook users with Windows PCs were hit by malicious friend notifications. In this article we will explain the security issue and attack.