Media Coverage

Dark Deeds in the DNS. It is no secret to either the people who undertake dark deeds on the Internet or to those trying to catch them that the DNS is one of the few systems that is universally visible. So, it’s no surprise that domain names are used to control botnets. Much time and effort has been spent studying DNS and the ways in which the DNS has been coopted to control malware. Stewart Garrick of Shadowserver presented on the Avalanche investigation, a multi-year law enforcement effort that spanned a number of countries. Some 2.5M domain names were blocked or seized during the investigative process.

A complex transnational organized cybercrime network that used GozNym malware in an attempt to steal an estimated $100 million from unsuspecting victims in the United States and around the world has been dismantled as part of an international law enforcement operation.  GozNym infected tens of thousands of victim computers worldwide, primarily in the United States and Europe.  The operation was highlighted by the unprecedented initiation of criminal prosecutions against members of the network in four different countries as a result of cooperation between the United States, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Germany, Bulgaria, Europol and Eurojust. Other agencies and organizations partnering in this effort include the United States Secret Service, the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) in Pittsburgh and the Shadowserver Foundation

A complex transnational organized cybercrime network that used GozNym malware in an attempt to steal an estimated $100 million from unsuspecting victims in the United States and around the world has been dismantled as part of an international law enforcement operation.  GozNym infected tens of thousands of victim computers worldwide, primarily in the United States and Europe.  The operation was highlighted by the unprecedented initiation of criminal prosecutions against members of the network in four different countries as a result of cooperation between the United States, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Germany, Bulgaria, Europol and Eurojust. Other agencies and organizations partnering in this effort include the United States Secret Service, the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) in Pittsburgh and the Shadowserver Foundation.

Last weekend, security researchers surfaced new supply-chain attacks involving Magecart web-skimmers placed on several web-based suppliers, including AdMaxim, CloudCMS, and Picreel. The breaches were part of a large-scale attack that hit a breadth of providers simultaneously intending to access as many websites as possible.

Web-based supply-chain attacks, which compromise vendors that supply code that adds or improves website functionality, gives attackers access to a wide range of victims at once because the compromised code often integrates with thousands of sites. In this blog, we’ll break down the Magecart skimming activity on these seven providers and detail when and how the compromises occurred, including how some of them could have been far worse.

The same skimmer was used for attacks against both services, which indicates it was the same Magecart Group. The exfiltration domain where stolen card data would have been sent was font-assets.com, which is associated with ww1-filecloud.com, another domain owned by the same attackers.

Both domains have been taken down and/or sinkholed with the help of Abuse.CH and the Shadowserver Foundation.

We uncovered a recent activity involving the notorious online credit card skimming attack known as Magecart. The attack, facilitated by a new cybercrime group, impacted 201 online campus stores in the United States and Canada.

We started detecting the attacks against multiple campus store websites on April 14, during which the sites were injected with a malicious skimming script (detected by Trend Micro as Trojan.JS.MIRRORTHEIF.AA) at their payment checkout pages.

With special thanks to our colleagues at abuse.ch and The Shadowserver Foundation for helping with the sinkholing of Mirrothief’s malicious domain and remediation reporting.

Akamai DNS Team: Be real. A Communications Service Provider’s (CSP’s) customer will not use their home to attack the Domain Name System (DNS). They might as well unplug from the Internet. Yet, customers get infected, CPEs get violated, and miscreants all over the Internet reflect attacks off CSP customers to attack others. This abuse happens every day. It is part of the “noise” of the Internet. It is also a major threat to the Internet. What does a CSP do when 30% of their customers are infected with malware?  The good news for CSPs is that organizations like CyberGreen and Shadowserver Foundation provide infection data and metrics as a public service.

Gangs using malicious JavaScript code to steal payment info target multiple online shopping platforms used by thousands of small stores; more advanced ones rely on tactics to remain undetected for a longer period. Generically known as Magecart because the Magento payment platform is a frequent target, the web skimming scripts are injected on checkout pages and collect credit and debit card details when customers pay for an order. In a report today, RiskIQ researcher Yonathan Klijnsma details a large-scale operation Magecart Group 12 led against OpenCart online stores. It used stealth tactics to keep its activity under the radar and pilfer as much payment info as possible. The domain used by the attacker is no longer active as RiskIQ together with AbuseCH and the Shadowserver Foundation took it offline.

With our internet-wide telemetry, RiskIQ has discovered some of the most significant Magecart attacks ever carried out. These involved a host of different tools and tactics including several different inject types, skimmers of varying sophistication, and countless intrusion methods. But for every Magecart attack that makes headlines, we detect thousands more that we don’t disclose. A considerable portion of these lesser-known breaches involves third-party payment platforms. The most notorious of these payment platforms is Magento. RiskIQ’s first blog post on Magecart introduced it as a new breed of threat centered around attacks on Magento, and recent developments show that stores running Magento are still a prime target for skimming groups. Considering the frequency with which Magecart groups target Magento, many security professionals associate Magecart (and web skimming in general) with Magento. The domain batbing.com has been taken offline as part of this publication. We would like to thank AbuseCH and the Shadowserver Foundation for their continued support on these actions.

You may have recently received a letter and/or email from Virgin Media explaining that we have been notified that a device on your network has a vulnerability known as an Open DNS Resolver. If you have received such a communication from us, read the advice given on this page to help resolve the issue. Note: This article is intended to provide advice. We suspect a device connected to your home network may have an open DNS resolver vulnerability. For more information on these reports please visit dnsscan.shadowserver.org

The ShadowServer Foundation is an organisation of volunteers that gathers and analyses data on botnets and malware propagation. The collected data is sent to National CSIRTs and network owners via a daily free remediation feed, and has been used to support law enforcement investigations. The talk by Piotr Kijewski focused on how ShadowServer operates, what data it collects, and its achievements in taking down botnets.