![]() The paper itself is scholarly and complete, but the end result is quite simple. This in turn let them turn up new phrases and other markers of BEK-generated tweets. They started with a simple fact: some BEK-generated tweets include specific phrases like "It's you on photo?" or more provocative phrases like "You were nude at party) cool photo)." By mining the huge dataset for these known phrases, they identified infected accounts. Each tweet's JSON header contains a wealth of information about the sender, the tweet, and its connection with other accounts. What they got was much more than just 140 characters per tweet. She estimates that their data set contains from 50 to 80 percent of all tweets during that time. Matthews and White collected multiple terabytes of data from Twitter over the course of 2012. The infected accounts send tweets containing links that, if clicked, claim their next victim. Despite the recent arrest of Blackhole's alleged author (Opens in a new window) the kit is a significant problem, and one of its many ways of spreading involves taking over Twitter accounts. Another report ties the BEK to 29 percent of all malicious URLs. Matthews reported that one estimate suggest the BEK was involved in more than half of all malware infestations in 2012. Their presentation was recognized as the best paper at the 8th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software ( Malware 2013 (Opens in a new window) for short).Īnybody with an urge to send spam, create an army of bots, or steal personal information can get started by purchasing the Blackhole Exploit Kit. ![]() student Joshua White at Clarkson University leveraged this fact to discover a reliable identifier for tweets generated by the Blackhole Exploit Kit. Virtually every tweet is visible to anyone who's interested. ![]() Twitter, on the other hand, is a broadcast medium. However, unless you have a friend at the NSA you'd have a hard time getting those samples. If you wanted to research how a program could distinguish malicious email messages from ordinary mail, you'd want to analyze millions of real-world samples, bad and good. How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication.How to Record the Screen on Your Windows PC or Mac.How to Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 Files.How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill.How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad.How to Block Robotexts and Spam Messages.The threat landscape will not change, and those who are affected by this, will merely move onto another exploit kit. The reported arrest could result in all current Blackhole infection vectors going down and the trend should continue based on these assumptions. "Due to the fact its update services and infrastructure are down, we can surmise it will have a significant impact to their operations. When asked for an opinion, a spokesperson for Symantec's Security Response told CSO that the arrest itself is significant, as Blackhole is one of the most dominant exploit kits in recent times. Authorities in Russia would not comment on the news, nor would they confirm or deny the arrest. However, those examples aside, there was no official confirmation that the rumors of an arrest were true until Europol's comments early Tuesday morning. ![]() Since Friday, updates to one of Blackhole's Java applet that 'Paunch' maintained has been idle, and the service used to encrypt exploits (crypt.am) has been offline. Word of the arrest was first reported by Maarten Boone, a security researcher at Dutch security firm Fox-IT. This is already happening in some instances, as one researcher spotted IFRAME injection points shift from Cool Exploit Kit (maintained by 'Paunch') to the Whitehole Exploit Kit. With this arrest, the lack of updates will see existing exploits go stale, leading to a mass migration to other crime kit platforms. The kit itself can be used for a number of attacks, as it supports exploits for Windows, Adobe, and Java, as well as custom scripts and attacks. Blackhole is rented by criminals and those responsible for its maintenance offer updates and features on a regular basis. "I know it is true, we got some information, but I cannot say anymore," Oerting told TechWeekEurope in a brief statement.Īccording to data from security firms such as Symantec, F-Secure, ESET, Kaspersky, Bit Defender, McAfee, and others, the Blackhole Exploit Kit is the most popular crime kit on the Web, and is used daily to tens of thousands of people online. After twenty-four hours of speculation, as well as a wall of silence from officials connected to the case, Europol's Troels Oerting, who is head of the European Cybercrime Center, has confirmed that 'Paunch' - one of the people behind the creation and maintenance of the Blackhole Exploit Kit - has been arrested in Russia. ![]()
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