Tag Archives: Threat Research

Ransomware attacks via RDP on the rise | Avast

Microsoft included Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) with its offerings for the first time in 1996. Since then, cybercriminals have been trying, sometimes with success, to hack into machines via this protocol and we’ve seen countless RDP attacks done by di…

New Torii Botnet uncovered, more sophisticated than Mirai | Avast

written by Jakub Kroustek, Vladislav Iliushin, Anna Shirokova, Jan Neduchal and Martin Hron
Disclaimer: Analysis of the server content and samples was done on Thursday, September 20th. Follow the Avast Blog for further updates.&nbs…

Avast research finds at least 32,000 smart homes and businesses at risk of leaking data | Avast

Introduction
Today, we hear a lot about IoT, which stands for internet of things. All these smart boxes, light bulbs, shades, thermostats, voice assistants, and smart machines are slowly sneaking into our households, businesses and industrial environm…

Avast research finds at least 32,000 smart homes and businesses at risk of leaking data | Avast

Introduction
Today, we hear a lot about IoT, which stands for internet of things. All these smart boxes, light bulbs, shades, thermostats, voice assistants, and smart machines are slowly sneaking into our households, businesses and industrial environm…

Spectre continues: Did we all trade speed for security? | Avast

For anyone in the cybersecurity industry, 2018 began on January 3rd — the day a trio of CPU bugs was announced. What trio? You probably recall Meltdown and Spectre, but from our perspective, the latter bug is really two for the price of one. While Meltdown and Spectre both got plenty of coverage in media outlets and security blogs around the globe (yes, that includes us, too), there’s an important distinction to make and more to say on this matter.

Botception with Necurs: Botnet distributes script with bot capabilities | Avast Threat Labs

Over the past few days, we have been analyzing a development with the Necurs botnet – a cybercrime operation dating back to 2012 that quickly became one of the largest spam botnets in the world. We reported on the infamous cybergang responsible for the distribution of global malware campaigns such as “Locky” and “GlobeImposter” in two blog posts (here and here) that explained how malware is spread via Necurs. And now we have seen a new link to that chain with attackers serving brand new files via the same botnet. These files are spreading malicious Visual Basic Scripts (VBScripts) and our analysis suggests that the authors are using the services provided by the Necurs botnet to reach more victims. The ultimate goal of the attackers is to make systems vulnerable to attacks with the ability to steal personal data and to infect them with keyloggers, banking malware, and ransomware.