Viruses & Malware

Mac users beware. North Korean hackers appear to be developing malware that can infect your computer.

Security firm Kaspersky Lab uncovered the macOS-based malware while investigating a hack at an unnamed cryptocurrency exchange in Asia. The breach was sourced back to an email that convinced a company employee to download a third-party app for trading virtual currencies.

If corporate America, government entities, and hospitals weren't enough, now ransomware developers are attacking Golf!

According to a report from GolfWeek, computers at the PGA have been infected with ransomware. The victims learned they were infected on Tuesday when ransom notes started appearing on their screen.

Someone impersonating administrators of cryptocurrency-related discussion channels on Slack, Discord, and other social messaging platforms has been attempting to lure others into installing macOS malware. The social-engineering campaign consists of posting a script in discussions and encouraging people to copy and paste that script into a Terminal window on their Macs. The command downloads a huge (34 megabyte) file and executes it, establishing a remote connection that acts as a backdoor for the attacker.

It was inevitable. Once Google published its findings for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in CPUs, the bad guys used that as a roadmap to create their malware. And so far, researchers have found more than 130 malware samples designed to exploit Spectre and Meltdown.

If there is any good news, it’s that the majority of the samples appear to be in the testing phase, according to antivirus testing firm AV-TEST, or are based on proof-of-concept software created by security researchers. Still, the number is rising fast.

A computer programmer has been accused of hacking, committing identity theft, and creating child pornography after allegedly developing custom malware to take control of thousands of computers.

Phillip Durachinsky, 28, of North Royalton, Ohio, USA, was indicted on Wednesday on 16 separate charges relating to the alleged creation of malware dubbed Fruitfly, which could commandeer infected macOS and Windows PC systems. Prosectors claim Durachinsky used the code to spy on thousands of people in a campaign that started in 2003, when he was just a teenager.

By: Adam Edmond

What Is It?

Ransomware is malicious software that essentially holds, encrypts or delete your data to acquire a ransom out of you. Briefly, hackers racketeering their victims by encrypting or removing all the critical files in case their demands aren't met.

Usually, there are four main ransomware attacks strategies:

A newly discovered piece of Android malware carries out a litany of malicious activities, including showing an almost unending series of ads, participating in distributed denial-of-service attacks, sending text messages to any number, and silently subscribing to paid services. Its biggest offense: a surreptitious cryptocurrency miner that's so aggressive it can physically damage an infected phone.

Tera, a Korean MMO that debuted in the US in 2012, has shut down its in-game chat system after some players discovered a potentially serious vulnerability. According to the players' report (Google docs), Tera's chat interface uses HTML, which people can exploit to blast players with external images and links, as well as to collect people's IP addresses. More importantly, someone truly unethical could use it to spread malware.

Fancy Bear, the advanced hacking group researchers say is tied to the Russian government, is actively exploiting a newly revived technique that gives attackers a stealthy means of infecting computers using Microsoft Office documents, security researchers said this week.