Cyber Crime

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 […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 09, 2013
My reading of the “ENISA Threat Landscape” report

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) is the EU’s agency responsible for cyber security issues of the European Union, its last report “ENISA Threat Landscape – Responding to the Evolving Threat Environment”, summarizing the principal threats and providing also useful indication on the emerging trends. The report proposes the list of top threats […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 04, 2013
Turkey – Another story on use of fraudulent digital certificates

It’s the news of the day, a fraudulent digital certificate that could be used for active phishing attacks against Google’s web properties. Using the certificate it is possible to spoof content in a classic phishing schema or perform a man-in-the-middle attack according Google Chrome Security Team and Microsoft experts. Microsoft has been immediately started the […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 28, 2012
DoJ wants to indict state-sponsored hackers. What is the real purpose?

The last couple of years has been characterized by the raise of state-sponsored cyber attacks, governments have increased cyber capabilities to defend their critical infrastructures from offensive originated in the cyberspace but they also improved tactics to offend and spy on foreign government networks. Governments and private business of countries such as US, Japan and […]