Duqu spawned from well-funded team of competent coders
The Duqu malware that targeted industrial manufacturers around the world contains so many advanced features that it could only have been developed by a team of highly skilled programmers who worked full time, security researchers say.
The features include steganographic processes that encrypt stolen data and embed it into image files before sending it to attacker-controlled servers, an analysis by NSS researchers found. Using a custom protocol to hide the proprietary information inside the innocuous-looking file, before it's sent to command and control servers, is a centuries-old technique used to conceal the exchange of sensitive communications.
Duqu is also the world's first known modular plugin rootkit, the researchers said. That allows the attackers to add or remove functionality and change command and control servers quickly with little effort. The conclusion the researchers draw from their analysis is that Duqu is the product of well organized team of highly motivated developers.
