Enlarge It’s not the kind of security discovery that happens often. A previously unknown hacker group used a novel backdoor, top-notch trade craft, and software engineering to create an espionage botnet that was largely invisible in many victim networks. The group, which security firm Mandiant is calling UNC3524, has spent the past 18 months burrowing […]
Enlarge A cryptocurrency platform was recently on the receiving end of one of the biggest distributed denial-of-service attacks ever after threat actors bombarded it with 15.3 million requests, content delivery network Cloudflare said. DDoS attacks can be measured in several ways, including by the volume of data, the number of packets, or the number of […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) For years, malicious hackers have been hacking large fleets of MikroTik routers and conscripting them into Trickbot, one of the Internet’s most destructive botnets. Now, Microsoft has finally figured out why and how the devices are being put to use. Trickbot came to light in 2016 as a trojan for stealing […]
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica ) Two years ago, researchers stumbled upon one of the Internet’s most intriguing botnets: a previously undiscovered network of 500 servers, many in well-known universities and businesses around the world, that was impervious to normal takedown methods. After lying low for 16 months, those researchers said, the botnet […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Thousands of networking devices belonging to AT&T Internet subscribers in the US have been infected with newly discovered malware that allows the devices to be used in denial-of-service attacks and attacks on internal networks, researchers said on Tuesday. The device model under attack is the EdgeMarc Enterprise Session Border Controller, an […]
Enlarge / You did a bad bad thing. (credit: Getty Images) Governments, vigilantes, and criminal hackers have a new way to disrupt botnets running the widely used attack software Cobalt Strike, courtesy of research published on Wednesday. Cobalt Strike is a legitimate security tool used by penetration testers to emulate malicious activity in a network. […]
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica) When hackers corral infected computers into a botnet, they take special care to ensure they don’t lose control of the server that sends commands and updates to the compromised devices. The precautions are designed to thwart security defenders who routinely dismantle botnets by taking over the command-and-control server […]