Category Archives: Backdoors

Fake UPS Document Installs Fake Microsoft Patch Payload

June 17, 2011 – 8:12 am

By Andrew Brandt As if we didn’t have enough to deal with this week — after a Microsoft patch Tuesday that brought with it a boatload of security updates for Windows, Office, Silverlight, Visual Studio, and other programs — some enterprising malware distributor is emailing around bogus tracking number malware dressed up in the icon [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Botnet activity, Downloaders, hijack search results, Keyloggers, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (1)

Android ‘Angry Birds’ Malware Contains Bot-like Code

June 10, 2011 – 9:05 am

By Andrew Brandt Most of yesterday, Threat Research Analyst Armando Orozco and I took a closer look at a piece of malware discovered by a university security researcher, Xuxian Jiang of North Carolina State. The malicious code, which the malware creator named Plankton, is embedded into a number of apps that were briefly posted to [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Android, Botnet activity, Downloaders, Mobile security, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research, Trojans | Comments (16)

Shipping Confirmations Back on the Radar

March 21, 2011 – 2:11 am

By Andrew Brandt After a prolonged absence, waves of Trojans distributed as Zipped email attachments have been showing up in our spam traps for a few weeks. The spam messages employ the same hackneyed shipping confirmation pretext as many previous iterations of this scam. This technique’s emergence as a common malware distribution method correlates with [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Botnet activity, Downloaders, Keyloggers, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (3)

Shorty Worm Spams Links, Hijacks Browsers

March 4, 2011 – 9:51 am

By Andrew Brandt & Grayson Milbourne A novel worm we’re calling Worm-IM-Shorty appears to be winding its way through Facebook and some instant messaging services, with its come-on disguised as a link to a photograph hosted elsewhere. But when recipients click the link, they receive an executable Trojan instead, dressed up with the name and [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in adware, Botnet activity, Downloaders, Firefox, hijack search results, Internet Explorer, Search engines, social engineering, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (1)

New Year’s Drive-By Brings a Recursive Rogue

January 6, 2011 – 9:28 am

By Andrew Brandt On the morning of January 2nd, still bleary eyed, I checked my email to find a charming notification informing me that I’d received an electronic greeting card. Yay! I thought to myself: The first targeted malware of 2011 plopped right into my lap. I immediately pulled up my research machine, browsed to [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Downloaders, hijack search results, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

10 Threats from 2010 We’d Prefer Remain History

January 1, 2011 – 3:32 pm

By Andrew Brandt With 2010 finally behind us, and an unknown number of cyberattacks likely to come in the new year, I thought I’d run down a brief list of the malicious campaigns criminals pulled off last year that I’d really dread to see anyone repeat. Now that they’re in the past, they should stay [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Blackhat SEO, Botnet activity, Destructive behavior, Enterprises, Firefox, Gaming threats, Internet Explorer, Keyloggers, Online shopping threats, Passwords, phishing, Phishing Trojans, Rogue Security Products, social engineering, social networks, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research, Trojans, Website owners | Comments (1)

Chinese Trojan Turns Infected PCs Into Web Servers

December 4, 2010 – 8:39 am

By Andrew Brandt A complex and elaborately conceived family of malware that originates in China installs the Apache Web server, as well as half a dozen keylogger and downloader payloads, disguised as components of legitimate apps. We and a few other antivirus vendors are calling this type of malware Taobatuo. It just so happens that [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Ad-clickers, Downloaders, hijack search results, Keyloggers, phishing, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (1)

Patchy Phisher Forces Firefox to Forego Forgetting Passwords

October 6, 2010 – 3:47 pm

By Andrew Brandt Every browser can, at the user’s discretion, be set up to remember passwords. In general, Webroot advises most users not to set the browser to store login credentials, because they’re so easily extracted by password-stealing Trojans like Zbot. In Firefox, for example, you can click Tools, Options, then open the Security tab, [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Keyloggers, phishing, Phishing Trojans, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research | Comments (21)

Civilization 5 Torrent Bonus: Uncivilized Malware

September 25, 2010 – 12:56 pm

By Andrew Brandt Bootlegged copies of Civilization 5, the highly anticipated, just-released real time strategy game, are already popping up in file sharing services. And, as we’ve come to expect, some of the pirated copies of the game come with that little something special — malicious components. One of our Threat Research Analysts, who also [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Botnet activity, Downloaders, Keyloggers, social engineering, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research, Trojans | Comments (8)

Epic Malware Dropper Makes No Attempt to Hide

September 21, 2010 – 3:09 pm

By Andrew Brandt In the world of first-person shooter games, getting the most headshots – hits on the opponent which instantly take the opponent’s avatar out of the game — is a prized goal. The headshot is the quickest way to dispatch a foe in virtually every shooter, which is why the file name of [...]

By Lisa Bongiovanni | Also posted in Ad-clickers, adware, Blackhat SEO, Destructive behavior, Downloaders, Keyloggers, social engineering, spam, Stupid malware tricks, Threat Research, Trojans | Leave a Comment
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