Security Response

Recently, Symantec observed a modified variant of Zeusbot/Spyeye which uses peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture to communicate. The original Zeusbot communicated directly with its C&C server to download configuration data and upload stolen information. This was a major point of failure for the bot because the C&C server could be blocked or taken down, and the attacker would lose control of the botnet. The bot did have a fallback strategy: if the C&C server was down it generated pseudo-random domain names to contact. The attacker could of course predict those domain names and register one in order to gain back control of the bot, but the solution was not very efficient. (Terminology note: although we use the term “C&C” for the main server controlled by the attackers, this server is not a typical C&C in its functionalities, but is mainly a collector of information from the drones.)

To overcome these limitations the attackers have now decided to use...

Banking Trojans are nothing new. They have been around for many years, considering detections such as the Infostealer.Bancos family date back to 2003. As more and more people moved to perform banking transactions online, Bancos created a huge and lucrative target for would be criminals to exploit.

Traditionally, banking Trojans typically just captured data traffic exchanged between the user and the online banking website. The captured information included the authentication information, which is collected and sent to the attacker by the Trojan for their use or to sell on to other parties for a profit. For as long as there has been banking Trojans, there has been a cat and mouse game between the banks and the criminals as each side respond to each other’s move to thwart the actions of the other. More sophisticated banking Trojans employ a man-in-the-browser (MITB) method...

Symantec has been monitoring the BlackHole toolkit, which has a powerful set of exploits and is spreading like wildfire. At present, it is the most prevalent exploit toolkit in the wild and can easily be compared with the likes of Neosploit and Phoenix in terms of the number of affected users.

In recent times, BlackHole has clearly emerged as the most used toolkit among hackers. The following IPS graph proves this fact, since more than 100,000 malicious hits are reported each day:

End-to-end Analysis of the BlackHole Exploit Kit

•    When a victim visits a clean...