Researchers have uncovered a single espionage malware attack that is capable of infecting multiple platforms, including computers running the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, Windows-powered mobile devices, and VMware virtual machines.
Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Saudi Aramco) said its computer systems had been shut down by a virus late on Wednesday, but it added that production had not been affected.
"An official source of Saudi Aramco confirmed that it had isolated electronic systems for the entire company today and cut off external access as an early precaution," said a statement in Arabic from the company.
Kaspersky Lab has appealed for help from top-notch cryptographers to help it break the encryption of a still-mysterious warhead delivered by the Gauss cyber-surveillance malware
"We are asking anyone interested in cryptology and mathematics to join us in solving the mystery and extracting the hidden payload," said the Moscow-based security company in a blog post Tuesday. "Despite our best efforts, we were unable to break the encryption."
The pervasive Citadel trojan, typically reserved for financial theft, was used to beat two-factor authentication and hack into the virtual private network (VPN) of a major international airport, researchers revealed Tuesday.
Security firm Trusteer discovered the attack, which launched a two-step assault on its victims in order to compromise the airport's VPN.
Researchers have come across another sophisticated piece of Middle Eastern-targeted espionage malware, which, at the very least, is capable of stealing bank login details, and, at the most extreme, is another Stuxnet.
While most of the world is treating the once-mighty BlackBerry as an also-ran in the smartphone market, malware authors still think it’s worth a crack – and have crafted a package designed to drop a Zeus malware variant on the device.
This post to Securelist by Kaspersky’s Denis Maslennikov details five new Zeus-in-the-mobile (ZitMo) files that have turned up in Europe. One of them is a dropper for Android, while the other four target the BlackBerry platform.
F-Secure has released its Mobile Threat report for the second quarter of 2012 and, as expected, the numbers show that Android malware has continued its steady incline.
The figures from the paper reveal that a total of 5033 malicious Android app package files (APKs) have been identified in the past three months. Statistically speaking, the figure is 64% higher compared to the previous quarter.
Iran has denied claims a virus that forced computers to play the AC/DC classic ‘Thunderstruck’ infected systems helping run its nuclear programme.
Last month, F-Secure’s chief research officer, Mikko Hypponen, was sent an email that appeared to be from a scientist working at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), claiming nuclear systems had been targeted by cyber attackers.
Apple has finally acknowledged its desktop computers are susceptible to viruses and malicious software.
The Cupertino, California, company behind the Apple Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad has included anti-virus and malware software called Gatekeeper in its new OS X Mountain Lion operating system, released last week.
More and more hackers are targeting the same application vulnerabilities on Macs and Windows PCs as a way to reap the financial benefits of writing cross-platform malware.
The trend involves exploiting vulnerabilities that go as far back as 2009 in Office documents. Other cross-platform, third-party technologies favored by hackers include Java, Adobe PDF and Adobe Flash, Microsoft security researcher Methusela Cebrian Ferrer said Tuesday in the company's Malware Protection Center blog.
