Ransomware trends – all towards more crime

There has always been a question of “what is malware for?”  What’s the point of either planting or automating the planting of malware on a computer that isn’t yours?  Many answers are relevant: For fun, laughs, or by accident To spy or grab data (keylogging, banking trojans) To use the computer’s resources to attack or gain something else (DDoS bots, Bitcoin mining, spam) To damage the person or company whose computer has been penetrated (viruses which delete data, or exfiltrate data to embarrass Sony) However, there’s an emerging and straightforward model for malware: Make money directly from the target via extortion. Ransomware has grown at a high rate over 2014, and all the trends are now moving towards increased prevalence.  The recent growth is the confluence of several trends: The maturity of encryption algorithms The wider availability of anonymizing networks like Tor and I2P The wider availability of anonymous digital currencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin The maturity of a worldwide market in “Zero-Day” exploits for common software packages like Flash or web server software Combine those trends, and it is not just possible, but likely, that criminals will try to extort money from computer users who need their digital files back.  They’ll be able to attack the users (Zero-day exploits and garden-variety phishing), encrypt files (with mature uncrackable algorithms), connect to the user anonymously (via Tor or I2P), and receive payment (anonymously with Bitcoin or Litecoin). With the existing cash flow, criminals have begun to bid for advertisements on websites like huffingtonpost.com, dailymotion.com, and mapquest.com.  Ransomware now has a marketing budget. There’s a lot of money already in this,...

New trend in credit card fraud

The ISC StormCast for today – https://isc.sans.edu/podcastdetail.html?id=3266 – mentions a new way stolen credit cards are being automated.  Rather than start at minimal amounts (as in 0.05) to test the cards, the attackers are starting at high amounts and ratcheting downwards until the transaction is accepted....