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Small-to-Midsized Businesses Targeted In More Invasive Cyberattacks
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Kelly Jackson Higgins
Kelly Jackson Higgins,
 User Rank: Strategist
11/13/2014 | 3:43:35 PM
Re: Commercializing Crime?
Well, as we have seen, there is no honor among thieves. While many malware peddlers now offer customer support and other services, there's also always a lot of risk that goes with teaming up with the underground.
lightcyber
lightcyber,
 User Rank: Strategist
11/13/2014 | 11:46:57 AM
Scaling the Economics of Attack
This is interseting because it enables the attackers to scale the economics in two ways: Not only are the creators monetizing the sale of the key loggers, but by using this "franchise model" and retaining administrative access to victims' machines, they scale their reach across SMB's. 

Even without the idea of leveraging a foothold from and SMB to a larger partner, this unlocks a level of theft that is surely profitable. When you combine the fact that most SMB's lack the resources to detect and respond to active breaches, this is (unfortunately) very compelling.

Clearly organizations of smaller size will require better tools (i.e., much more automation) to detect such active attacks and remediate. I'm afraid we've come to the point where blaming the victim (don't click on that email) and relying on 100% effectiveness from prevention (AV, firewall, etc.) technologies is clearly ineffective.
Bprince
Bprince,
 User Rank: Ninja
11/12/2014 | 8:36:51 AM
Re: Commercializing Crime?
Interesting idea. My guess is that they just want access to the machines their buyers infect so they can run other malware scams on them as well and increase their profitability. Smart for them, bad for everyone else. 
Marilyn Cohodas
Marilyn Cohodas,
 User Rank: Strategist
11/12/2014 | 7:53:33 AM
Re: Commercializing Crime?
Good point, Ryan. I like that karma. It would be nice to have these cybercriminals caught in their own trap. Probably too good to be true. Sadly....
RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
11/12/2014 | 7:50:04 AM
Re: Commercializing Crime?
Wow, that is astonishing! I wonder what the occurence is of the creators behind Predator and Pain extorting their buyers. I would imagine that administrative access to the buyers victims could be correlated back to administrative access of the buyers. Now that would be something of a karmic wheel.
RogerG797
RogerG797,
 User Rank: Apprentice
11/11/2014 | 7:33:26 PM
On UNIX/Linux, most keyloggers are freely available for download
I don't think that's right: ethical developers should not make those kind of working result freely available and also not give to people who could use it for malicious purpose.

WZIS Software developed a TTY keylogger for testing and understanding purpose, it's installed on a demo machine with permission of 111, so people can test it on that machine, but not copy it.
Marilyn Cohodas
Marilyn Cohodas,
 User Rank: Strategist
11/11/2014 | 4:07:23 PM
Commercializing Crime?
I find this to be most astonishing: 

Another interesting twist, according to Trend's research, is that the bad guys behind the Predator Pain and Limitless malware still retain administrative rights to the malware when they sell a copy; they get access to the victims that the buyers infect, as well. 

Does TrendMicro provide any prescriptive advice for SMBs to avoid getting caught in this kind of attack?



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