ESET Threat Blog

Here are some recently released podcasts by ESET Rearchers, addressing current topics such as the recent VeriSign hacks, the takedown of MegaUpload, and the problems with using good malware to catch the bad guys:
1. VeriSign, Credit Card Processor, Hacked Multiple Times
2. Mega Upload Website Shutdown by U.S. Department of Justice
3. Is The Stop Online Piracy … Read More…

Our white paper on Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUAs) has been revised with additional information, including information about how legitimate software can become classified as a PUA due to its misuse, a discussion of a type of downloader called a software wrapper and updated screen shots. It can be found in the White Papers section  Problematic, … Read More…

Many of you have read the last few weeks that we published posts on trends for 2012 in the field of malware and cybercrime. In this series I wrote a post based on the document that the Education and Research team of ESET Latin America put together, entitled "2012 Predictions: More mobile malware and localized … Read More…

As expected, malware developers and scam artists have greeted the death of North Korea's dictatorial leader, Kim Jong-il, with Black Hat SEO and Social Engineering attacks. The Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea suffered a heart attack on a train journey last month and a steady stream of schemes to exploit the … Read More…

This article was written in collaboration with my colleague Jean-Ian Boutin.
The Wigon botnet (also known as Cutwail) is being used in a massive spam campaign. A multitude of ruses are used to get the user to click on a link: fake LinkedIn or Facebook notifications, free Windows licenses, fake deliveries etc. The links are pointing … Read More…

If you've been following this blog for a few years, you probably know that I'm reluctant to play the prediction game, but it seems to be expected at this time of year, so here's my contribution. Java will consolidate its position as the successor to PDF and SWF in the favourite exploits stakes, the latest … Read More…

The FDIC is probably one of the most misunderstood quasi-governmental entities in America, which may account for its enduring popularity as part of malware and phishing scams. I'm not the most dedicated follower of banking news, but I did work for a bank once and I do try to keep up, yet I have never … Read More…

Recently, a new data-stealing worm caught our attention. The reason why it stands out from many similar amateur creations is that its author is most probably Czech, as the text strings, variable and function names used by the malware suggest.

The Czech text above is displayed by the worm inside a console window and translates to: … Read More…

Yesterday, ESET announced the discovery of a new threat against the Apple Mac OS X platform. Today, we have found a new version of the same threat. The new version is similar to the previous version with two important differences. The first addition to this threat is that it now implements persistence on an infected … Read More…

We’ve just come across an IRC controlled backdoor that enables the infected machine to become a bot for Distributed Denial of Service attacks. The interesting part about it is that it’s a Mach-O binary – targeting Mac OS X. ESET’s research team compared this to samples in our malware collection and discovered that this code … Read More…