Cyber Crime

Pierluigi Paganini February 05, 2013
US Department of Energy hit by a sophisticated cyber attack

It seems that suddenly US have discovered to be victim of a serious of cyber espionage campaigns that are targeting every sector from media to military and every time seems that is a must to blame the nightmare China. A report published in 2012 by the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission revealed that “U.S. industry […]

Pierluigi Paganini February 04, 2013
PiceBOT crimeware hit Latin American banking

In the last weeks we discussed on the efficiency of exploit kits, malicious tool kits  that allow to the attackers to exploit a huge quantity of vulnerabilities in victims systems. These products are largely diffused in the underground where is possible to find different tools usable for various purpose, most precious are those kit that […]

Pierluigi Paganini February 01, 2013
Cyber espionage campaign against Americans news agencies – NYT

The news is sensational as granted one of the most important journal, the New York Times has announced that during the last months it was victim of cyber espionage coordinated by Chinese hackers probably state-sponsored attackers. The attacks happened in concomitance with the investigation of the journal, published on Oct. 25th, that revealed that the […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 25, 2013
The rise of exploit kits according to Solutionary SERT

Today I desire to discuss about a very interesting study by Solutionary’s Security Engineering Research Team (SERT) that shared the results related an analysis on malware and exploit kits diffusion observed with its solution ActiveGuard service platform. The platform has collected and analyzed malicious events that hit company clients globally, the data have been provided […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 23, 2013
Russian government wants to strengthen its cyber defense,what’s new?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is considered one of the political figures most attentive to the development of a suitable cyber strategy to protect his countries from cyber attacks. Putin is an intelligent man who has always understood the strategic importance of cyberspace, according many experts he has always invested in the development of cyber capabilities, […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 20, 2013
New variant of banking malware Shylock spread via Skype

The news is very concerning, a new variant of the banking malware known as Shylock has been detected, it includes the capability to spread over Skype. Shylock is an old acquaintance for security community, the malware was detected for first time in 2011 by experts from Trustee firm, it is used to steal banking credentials from its […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 19, 2013
Bouncer, new phishing variant from RSA

Despite simplicity of the schema phishing attacks have increased exponentially in the last years targeting every sector,both public and private. RSA’s October Online Fraud Report 2012 revealed a worrying scenario, phishing attacks increased up 19% over the second half of 2011, the total loss for various organizations has been estimated to $2.1 billion over the last […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 17, 2013
Red October, RBN and too many questions still unresolved

The recently discovered cyber espionage campaign “Red October” has shocked world wide security community, the principal questions raised are: Who is behind the attacks? How is possible that for so long time the campaign went undetected? Which is the role of AV company in these operations? To try to understand who is behind the attacks […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 12, 2013
New security problem for Oracle Java software

The year is start way for Oracle Java platform, a new Java 0-day vulnerability has been discovered and worldwide security community is very concerned on the potential effect of the bug. We have discovered how much dangerous could be the exploit of a zero-day vulnerability especially against institutional targets and governments (e.g. Elderwood project), state-sponsored hackers […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 10, 2013
Stylometric analysis to track anonymous users in the underground

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies conscious of the high risks related to cyber threats have started massive monitoring campaign, everything must be controlled to avoid unpleasant surprises. The trend is shared by every governments of the planet, intelligence agencies are making great investments in term of money and resources to define new methods and to […]