botnets

Chameleon botnet steals $6M per month in click fraud scam

Security researchers say they have identified a botnet that steals more than $6 million per month by generating fake customer clicks on online display ads.

Dubbed Chameleon, the botnet has infected more than 120,000 Windows-based computers in the U.S., mimicking human behavior on select Web sites to generate billions of ad impressions and fraudulent income for its creators, according to security firm Spider.io.

Click fraud costs Web advertisers in lost revenue by making them pay for illegitimate clicks. Spider.io reported that advertisers paid an average of 69 cents per one thousand impressions generated by the botnet. … Read more

Malware getting smarter, says McAfee

Malware continues to grow, not just in volume but in sophistication, according to a new report from McAfee.

Released today, the security vendor's fourth-quarter 2012 Threats Report found that more organizations are being targeted by more clever cyberattacks.

The number of trojans designed to steal passwords rose 72 percent last quarter. Some of these trojans are part of "customized" threats, while others are packaged with more "off-the-shelf" forms of malware. As one example, the Citadel trojan was specifically designed to hit financial services companies.

Operation High Roller and Project Bliztkrieg were also cited by McAfee … Read more

Microsoft, Symantec shutter another botnet

Microsoft and security software maker Symantec have revealed that they collaborated on the take-down of a botnet that had infected hundreds of thousands of computers.

By stopping the botnet, infected computers were reportedly unable to search the Internet. According to the story as first reported by Reuters, this is the first time that the companies which stopped the botnet directly warned people who had infected computers and offered them clean-up tools.

The botnet, called Bamital, is the sixth one that that Microsoft has received a court order to stop since 2010 and the second that it has worked with Symantec … Read more

U.S. is home to greatest number of botnet servers, says McAfee

The United States is responsible for the highest number of botnet servers in the world, according to new data from McAfee.

A map and a list of major countries posted by McAfee yesterday show the greatest concentration of botnet servers to be in the U.S., with 631. That's more than two and a half times higher than the second country on the list -- the British Virgin Islands with 237.

The Netherlands took third place with 154 servers, followed by Russia with 125, Germany with 95, and Korea with 81. Among the Top 10, Canada fared the best … Read more

Facebook helps FBI take down $850M botnet crime ring

Facebook helped the FBI take down an international crime ring that used a botnet to infect 11 million computers and steal more than $850 million, one of the largest cybercrime hauls in history.

The FBI announced today that with the social-networking giant's assistance, it had arrested 10 people from countries around the world who it said used the Yahos malware and Butterfly botnet to steal victims' credit card, bank account, and personal information.

"Facebook's security team provided assistance to law enforcement throughout the investigation by helping to identify the root cause, the perpetrators, and those affected by … Read more

Zeus botnet steals $47M from European bank customers

A new version of the Zeus botnet was used to steal about $47 million from European banking customers in the past year, security researchers report.

Dubbed "Eurograbber" by security vendors Versafe and Check Point Software Technologies in a report (PDF) released today, the malware is designed to defeat the two-factor authentication process banks use for transactions by intercepting bank messages sent to victims' phones.

A variant of the Zeus malware used to steal more than $100 million, Eurograbber typically launched its attack when a victim clicked on a malicious link most likely included in a phishing attempt. After … Read more

India is world leader in spam output

India has surpassed the U.S. and taken the lead as the greatest spam-sending country in the world. One out of every six junk messages that litter users' e-mail inboxes are coming from India, according to a new report from SophosLabs.

The security vendor's third-quarter "Dirty Dozen" report of spam-relaying countries found that India upped its percentage of global spam for the third quarter in a row and now accounts for more than 16 percent of all junk e-mails.

What is important to note, however, is that this spam doesn't necessarily come directly from India's … Read more

Symantec: Russian criminals sell Web 'proxy' with backdoors

A black hat Russian operation has served malware to hundreds of thousands of users a year who thought they were signing up for a paid proxy service, Symantec said today.

The security company said in a blog post that it has linked the malware to a cluster of Russian Web sites -- including one called Proxybox.name -- that claim to provide proxy access, VPN services, and antivirus scanning. Proxybox.name requires users to download what it calls "functional, simple, and convenient" proxy software.

Vikram Thakur, principal manager at Symantec Security Response, told CNET this afternoon that:

What … Read more

Microsoft settles botnet case against Chinese site

Microsoft reached a settlement in its legal case against a Web site that has been linked to malicious activity, with the Chinese company agreeing to block malware tied to its domain.

The software giant, which originally filed the suit about two weeks ago, said today that the operator of 3322.org, Peng Yong, has agreed to work with Microsoft and the Chinese Computer Emergency Response Team to block all malicious connections to the 3322.org domain and prevent malware infections associated with the site.

The 3322.org owner will direct all subdomains identified in a "block-list" to a … Read more