Cybercrime

Pierluigi Paganini July 06, 2012
A view on the economic impact of cyber attacks, from US to China

On June 28th, a FBI official declared before a House panel that the phenomenon of cyber espionage is increasing with an alarming trend. We are living a period of great crisis and the intellectual property is becoming a privileged target for cyber attacks. It has been estimated that the economic espionage in the current fiscal […]

Pierluigi Paganini July 04, 2012
Citadel trojan, migration of cybercrime to the deep web

We all remember the Citadel trojan, based on  the Zeus experience has evolved becoming one of the most interesting cyber criminal project. Few months ago I wrote on the excellent customer relationship management (CRM) model implemented by its creators. Thanks a malware evolution dictated by market needs, the trojan has evolved in time, many instances […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 26, 2012
Capfire4, malware-as-a-service platform for crime

It’s not first time we discuss of cybercrime and in particular of its organizational models, creative servicex offer any kind of support to organizations and individuals that desire to conduct an attack against specific target. Cyber criminals in the past have already used cloud architectures to rent computational resources to involve in powerful cyber attacks. […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 25, 2012
The ‘cyber war’ era began long ago

Article published on The Malta Indipendent by Ron Kelson, Pierluigi Paganini, Benjamin Gittins, David Pace  US military strategist John Boyd states: “War comprises acts of physical, biological, psychological, social, cultural and other destruction at all levels, for example, intrapsychic, interpersonal, intergroup, interorganisational, and international.” Cyber warfare is combat in cyberspace and includes computers, the Internet and the […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 20, 2012
Malware and new sophisticated cyber techniques against banking

Money motivates the cyber assault to banking by cybercrime, but the finance world is also considered a privileged target for sponsored-state attacks as part of cyber offense strategies. Let’s consider that the banking world is profoundly changing, the introduction of mobile devices, social networks, the openess to web services, the coming of new technologies such […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 18, 2012
On new generation of P2P botnets

Zeus is one of the longest-running malware that raged for months, appearing in various forms on the web thanks to the continuous changes made by the cybercrime industry. This time the news is really interesting, Symantec security researchers have detected a new variant of Zeus that not relies on command and control (C&C) servers for […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 16, 2012
The malware factory

Article Published on The Hacker New Magazine – June Edition “Malware” With the term malware we refer a heterogeneous family of malicious software designed with the purpose to disrupt computer operation, gather sensitive information, or gain unauthorized access to victims systems. With the term we indicate in fact several types of malicious code such as computer […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 13, 2012
Hacktivist vs Twitter, security of OAuth authorization

There isn’t peace for social network platforms, priority target for cybercrime and governments, they represent a mine of data useful for business and espionage. After the news of the LinkedIN hack, also Twitter have been successfully attacked by a group of hacktivist named LulzSec Reborn that has leaked user credentials of more of 10,000 accounts. […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 04, 2012
In the shadow of the Flame, Warner Bros, China Telecom & US Navy hacks

What’s happening while the world’s attention is on Flame malware? The cyberspace is a very turbulent place where groups of hackers daily attack governments and private industries. Governments, hacktivist, cybercrime opposing forces facing each other on the same board, a game of chess where the outcome is unpredictable and no shortage of twists. Stuxnet, Flame […]

Pierluigi Paganini June 04, 2012
The hacktivism phenomenon

Article published on The Malta Indipendent The last years have been characterised by the escalation of operations conducted by hacktivist groups, such as the famous Anonymous, which have expressed social dissent through cyber attacks. In contemporary society technology plays a crucial role, and is used as a new cultural vehicle and even aggregation element. It’s a […]