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This timeline of computer viruses and worms presents a chronological timeline of noteworthy computer viruses, computer worms, Trojan horses, similar malware, related research and events.
Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, more advanced malware uses a technique called cryptoviral extortion. It encrypts the victim's files, making them inaccessible, and demands a ransom payment to decrypt them. In a properly implemented cryptoviral extortion attack, recovering the files without the decryption key is an intractable problem – and difficult to trace digital currencies such as paysafecard or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are used for the ransoms, making tracing and prosecuting the perpetrators difficult.
Man-in-the-browser, a form of Internet threat related to man-in-the-middle (MITM), is a proxy Trojan horse that infects a web browser by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in browser security to modify web pages, modify transaction content or insert additional transactions, all in a covert fashion invisible to both the user and host web application. A MitB attack will be successful irrespective of whether security mechanisms such as SSL/PKI and/or two- or three-factor authentication solutions are in place. A MitB attack may be countered by using out-of-band transaction verification, although SMS verification can be defeated by man-in-the-mobile (MitMo) malware infection on the mobile phone. Trojans may be detected and removed by antivirus software;, but a 2011 report concluded that additional measures on top of antivirus software were needed.
Zeus, ZeuS, or Zbot is a Trojan horse malware package that runs on versions of Microsoft Windows. While it can be used to carry out many malicious and criminal tasks, it is often used to steal banking information by man-in-the-browser keystroke logging and form grabbing. It is also used to install the CryptoLocker ransomware. Zeus is spread mainly through drive-by downloads and phishing schemes. First identified in July 2007 when it was used to steal information from the United States Department of Transportation, it became more widespread in March 2009. In June 2009 security company Prevx discovered that Zeus had compromised over 74,000 FTP accounts on websites of such companies as the Bank of America, NASA, Monster.com, ABC, Oracle, Play.com, Cisco, Amazon, and BusinessWeek. Similarly to Koobface, Zeus has also been used to trick victims of technical support scams into giving the scam artists money through pop-up messages that claim the user has a virus, when in reality they might have no viruses at all. The scammers may use programs such as Command prompt or Event viewer to make the user believe that their computer is infected.
Alureon is a trojan and rootkit created to steal data by intercepting a system's network traffic and searching for banking usernames and passwords, credit card data, PayPal information, social security numbers, and other sensitive user data. Following a series of customer complaints, Microsoft determined that Alureon caused a wave of BSoDs on some 32-bit Microsoft Windows systems. The update, MS10-015, triggered these crashes by breaking assumptions made by the malware author(s).
Avalanche was a criminal syndicate involved in phishing attacks, online bank fraud, and ransomware. The name also refers to the network of owned, rented, and compromised systems used to carry out that activity. Avalanche only infected computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Virut is a cybercrime malware botnet, operating at least since 2006, and one of the major botnets and malware distributors on the Internet. In January 2013, its operations were disrupted by the Polish organization Naukowa i Akademicka Sieć Komputerowa.
The CryptoLocker ransomware attack was a cyberattack using the CryptoLocker ransomware that occurred from 5 September 2013 to late May 2014. The attack utilized a trojan that targeted computers running Microsoft Windows, and was believed to have first been posted to the Internet on 5 September 2013. It propagated via infected email attachments, and via an existing Gameover ZeuS botnet. When activated, the malware encrypted certain types of files stored on local and mounted network drives using RSA public-key cryptography, with the private key stored only on the malware's control servers. The malware then displayed a message which offered to decrypt the data if a payment was made by a stated deadline, and it threatened to delete the private key if the deadline passes. If the deadline was not met, the malware offered to decrypt data via an online service provided by the malware's operators, for a significantly higher price in bitcoin. There was no guarantee that payment would release the encrypted content.
The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) is a Microsoft sponsored team of international legal and internet security experts employing the latest tools and technologies to stop or interfere with cyber crime and cyber threats. The Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit was assembled in 2008. In 2013, a Cybercrime center for the DCU was opened in Redmond, Washington. There are about 100 members of the DCU stationed just in Redmond, Washington at the original Cybercrime Center. Members of the DCU include lawyers, data scientists, investigators, forensic analysts, and engineers. The DCU has international offices located in major cities such as: Beijing, Berlin, Bogota, Delhi, Dublin, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Washington, D.C. The DCU's main focuses are child protection, copyright infringement and malware crimes. The DCU must work closely with law enforcement to ensure the perpetrators are punished to the full extent of the law. The DCU has taken down many major botnets such as the Citadel, Rustock, and Zeus. Around the world malware has cost users about $113 billion and the DCU's jobs is to shut them down in accordance with the law.
Operation Tovar is an international collaborative operation carried out by law enforcement agencies from multiple countries against the Gameover ZeuS botnet, which is believed by the investigators to have been used in bank fraud and the distribution of the CryptoLocker ransomware.
GameOver ZeuS (GOZ), also known as peer-to-peer (P2P) ZeuS, ZeuS3, and GoZeus, is a Trojan horse developed by Russian cybercriminal Evgeniy Bogachev. Created in 2011 as a successor to Jabber Zeus, another project of Bogachev's, the malware is notorious for its usage in bank fraud resulting in damages of approximately $100 million and being the main vehicle through which the CryptoLocker ransomware attack was conducted, resulting in millions of dollars of losses. At the peak of its activity in 2012 and 2013, between 500,000 and 1 million computers were infected with GameOver ZeuS.
Roman Valerevich Seleznev, also known by his hacker name Track2, is a Russian computer hacker. Seleznev was indicted in the United States in 2011, and was convicted of hacking into servers to steal credit-card data. His activities are estimated to have caused more than $169 million in damages to businesses and financial institutions. Seleznev was arrested on July 5, 2014, and was sentenced to 27 years in prison for wire fraud, intentional damage to a protected computer, and identity theft.
Tiny Banker Trojan, also called Tinba, is a malware program that targets financial institution websites. It is a modified form of an older form of viruses known as Banker Trojans, yet it is much smaller in size and more powerful. It works by establishing man-in-the-browser attacks and network sniffing. Since its discovery, it has been found to have infected more than two dozen major banking institutions in the United States, including TD Bank, Chase, HSBC, Wells Fargo, PNC, and Bank of America. It is designed to steal users' sensitive data, such as account login information and banking codes.
Dridex, also known as Bugat and Cridex, is a form of malware that specializes in stealing bank credentials via a system that utilizes macros from Microsoft Word.
SpyEye is a malware program that attacks users running Google Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows operating systems. This malware uses keystroke logging and form grabbing to steal user credentials for malicious use. SpyEye allows hackers to steal money from online bank accounts and initiate transactions even while valid users are logged into their bank account
The Necurs botnet is a distributor of many pieces of malware, most notably Locky.
ZeuS Panda, Panda Banker, or Panda is a variant of the original Zeus under the banking Trojan category. Its discovery was in 2016 in Brazil around the time of the Olympic Games. The majority of the code is derived from the original Zeus trojan, and maintains the coding to carry out man-in-the-browser, keystroke logging, and form grabbing attacks. ZeuS Panda launches attack campaigns with a variety of exploit kits and loaders by way of drive-by downloads and phishing emails, and also hooking internet search results to infected pages. Stealth capabilities make not only detecting but analyzing the malware difficult.
Hamza Bendelladj, born in 1988 in Tizi Ouzou, is an Algerian cyber-criminal and carder who goes by the code name BX1 and has been nicknamed as the "Smiling Hacker". Bendelladj is a polyglot, speaking 5 languages often used for profit in view of his linguistic knowledge, in order to extract money almost everywhere in the world. This led to a search for him that lasted 5 years. He was on the top 10 list of the most wanted hackers by Interpol and the FBI for allegedly embezzling tens of millions of dollars from more than two hundred American and European financial institutions via a computer virus, the "SpyEYE Botnet", which infected more than 60 million computers worldwide, mostly from the United States, and was developed with his Russian accomplice Aleksandr Andreivich Panin, a.k.a. "Gribodemon", to steal banking information stored on infected computers.
Jabber Zeus was a cybercriminal syndicate and associated Trojan horse created and run by hackers and money launderers based in Russia, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. It was the second main iteration of the Zeus malware and racketeering enterprise, succeeding Zeus and preceding Gameover Zeus.
References
- ↑ Segura, Jérôme (5 November 2012). "Citadel: a cyber-criminal's ultimate weapon?". Malwarebytes Labs.
- ↑ "Cybercriminals Use Citadel to Compromise Password Management and Authentication Solutions". securityintelligence.com. 19 November 2014.
- ↑ "Citadel Banking Malware Is Evolving and Spreading Rapidly, Researchers Warn". PCWorld.
- ↑ "Russian sentenced in U.S. to five years prison for 'Citadel' malware". Reuters. 19 July 2017.
- ↑ "Russian Citizen who Helped Develop the "Citadel" Malware Toolkit is Sentenced". www.justice.gov. 20 July 2017.
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