coreflood

Buzz Out Loud 1457: PlayStation Network hack: This is bad, man. (Podcast)

Sony comes clean about six days after its network "intrusion" and admits that its hack attack actually led to the reveal of tens of millions of usernames, addresses, dates of birth, and maybe even passwords, security questions, and credit card numbers. So, that's a pretty bad day over at Sony. Also, Apple "comes clean" on its location data tracking, claiming that it's not happening, and even if it is happening, it's not that accurate, and even if it is that accurate, it's just so they can serve you better iAds. Wait, what?

U.S. shutters botnet, can disable malware remotely

By seizing servers and domain names and getting permission to remotely turn off malware on compromised PCs, U.S. officials have disabled a botnet that steals data from infected computers.

The legal actions are part of the "most complete and comprehensive enforcement action ever taken by U.S. authorities to disable an international botnet," according to a statement from the Department of Justice. A botnet is a group of computers that have been compromised and are being remotely controlled by attackers, typically to send spam or attack other computers.

It's the first time law enforcement in the … Read more

Security expert talks Russian gangs, botnets

In February of 2005, a Miami man sued Bank of America for not adequately protecting him against a $90,000 fraudulent wire transfer to the Parex Bank in Latvia. Joe Lopez was the first online user to sue his financial institution for not protecting his assets from a computer hacker.

Lopez, owner of a computer and copier supply business, accused Bank of America of negligence and breach of contract for not alerting him in advance to the existence of a piece of malware known as "Coreflood" prior to April 6, 2004, when the alleged theft took place.

Shortly … Read more

SecureWorks unmasks the Coreflood Trojan

On Monday, SecureWorks released its analysis of the Coreflood Trojan, providing an inside look at a stealthy online predator.

According to a blog by Joe Stewart, director of malware research for SecureWorks, Coreflood started out as an IRC (Internet relay chat) botnet back in 2002. Coreflood--or AFcore, as the author refers to it within the code--is apparently viewed by its author as corporate software that can be tweaked as business needs change. For example, over the last six years, Coreflood has evolved from initiating distributed denial-of-service attacks to collecting IDs and passwords for bank fraud.

With the help of Spamhaus, … Read more