Tag Archives: Russia

DIY Russian mobile number harvesting tool spotted in the wild

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By Dancho Danchev

Earlier this year we profiled a newly released mobile/phone number harvesting application, a common tool in the arsenal of mobile spammers, as well as vendors of mobile spam services. Since the practice is an inseparable part of the mobile spamming process, cybercriminals continue periodically releasing new mobile number harvesting applications, update their features, but most interestingly, continue exclusively targeting Russian users.

In this post, I’ll profile yet another DIY mobile number harvesting tool available on the underground marketplace since 2011, and emphasize on its most recent (2013) updated feature, namely, the use of proxies.

More details: Continue reading →

Nuclear Exploit Pack goes 2.0

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By Dancho Danchev

In times when the market leading Black Hole Exploit Kit continues to gain market share, competing products are prone to emerge. What is the competition up to? Has it managed to differentiate itself from the market leading product or is it basically a “me too” exploit kit lacking any significant features worth emphasizing on?

In this post, I’ll profile the recently advertised Nuclear Exploit Pack v.2.0, elaborate on its features, and discuss whether or not it has the potential to outpace the market leader (Black Hole Exploit Kit) in terms of market share.

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From Russia with iPhone selling affiliate networks

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By Dancho Danchev

With affiliate networks continuing to represent among the few key growth factors of the cybercrime ecosystem, it shouldn’t be surprising that cybercriminals continue introducing new services and goods with questionable quality and sometimes unknown origins on the market, with the idea to entice potential network participants into monetizing the traffic they can deliver through black hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization), malvertising, and spam campaigns.

In this post, I’ll profile a recently launched affiliate network selling iPhones that primarily targets Russian-speaking customers, and emphasizes the traffic acquisition scheme used by one of the network’s participants.

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New Russian service sells access to compromised social networking accounts

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By Dancho Danchev

On daily basis, hundreds of thousands of legitimate accounts across multiple social networks get compromised, to be later on abused as a platform for launching related cyber attacks and social engineering attempts.

Recently, I came across a new Russian service offering access to compromised accounts across multiple social networks such as Vkontakte, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and last but not least, compromised email accounts. What’s particularly interesting about this service is the fact that it’s exclusively targeting Russian and Ukrainian users.

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Phishing Trojan Targets Russian Finance Websites

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By Andrew Brandt

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20090410_russian_banksFor a long time, we’ve heard about phishing attacks originating in Russia or eastern Europe that target western banks. There’s nothing surprising there. Latter-day Willie Suttons typically target big US or European banks because, well, that’s where the money is.

That’s why I was kind of surprised to stumble across a phishing Trojan that targets some of Russia’s largest online financial Web sites, including RBK Money (formerly known as RUPay), Yandex, Moneymail, and OSMP — one of Russia’s Paypal-alternatives. Aside from e-gold, I hadn’t seen this many Russia-specific websites listed as targets within a phishing trojan before.

Is Russia suddenly “where the money is?” According to Forbes, it is. The magazine reported last year that its most recent list of the world’s richest people included 87 Russian billionaires — a year-over-year increase of 64% — and 136,000 millionaires. So, maybe it makes sense for the people who build these malicious tools to target Russian banks and online payment sites. Continue reading →