Crimeware
Class of malware designed specifically to automate cybercrime From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Crimeware is a class of malware designed specifically to automate cybercrime.[1]
Crimeware (as distinct from spyware and adware) is designed to perpetrate identity theft through social engineering or technical stealth in order to access a computer user's financial and retail accounts for the purpose of taking funds from those accounts or completing unauthorized transactions on behalf of the cyberthief.[citation needed] Alternatively, crimeware may steal confidential or sensitive corporate information. Crimeware represents a growing problem in network security as many malicious code threats seek to pilfer valuable, confidential information.
The cybercrime landscape has shifted from individuals developing their own tools to a market where crimeware, tools and services for illegal online activities, can be easily acquired in online marketplaces. These crimeware markets are expected to expand, especially targeting mobile devices.[2]
The term crimeware was coined by David Jevans in February 2005 in an Anti-Phishing Working Group response to the FDIC article "Putting an End to Account-Hijacking Identity Theft".[3]
Criminals use a variety of techniques to steal confidential data through crimeware, including through the following methods:
- Surreptitiously install keystroke loggers to collect sensitive data—login and password information for online bank accounts, for example—and report them back to the thief.[4]
- Redirect a user's web browser to a counterfeit website controlled by the thief even when the user types the website's proper domain name in the address bar, also known as pharming.[5]
- Steal passwords cached on a user's system.[6]
- Hijack a user session at a financial institution and drain the account without the user's knowledge.
- Enable remote access into applications, allowing criminals to break into networks for malicious purposes.
- Encrypt all data on a computer and require the user to pay a ransom to decrypt it (ransomware).
Crimeware threats can be installed on victims' computers through multiple delivery vectors, including:
- Vulnerabilities in Web applications. The Bankash.G Trojan, for example, exploited an Internet Explorer vulnerability to steal passwords and monitor user input on webmail and online commerce sites.[6]
- Targeted attacks sent via SMTP. These social-engineered threats often arrive disguised as a valid e-mail message and include specific company information and sender addresses. The malicious e-mails use social engineering to manipulate users to open the attachment and execute the payload.[7]
- Remote exploits that exploit vulnerabilities on servers and clients[8]
Crimeware can have a significant economic impact due to loss of sensitive and proprietary information and associated financial losses. One survey estimates that in 2005 organizations lost in excess of $30 million due to the theft of proprietary information.[9] The theft of financial or confidential information from corporate networks often places the organizations in violation of government and industry-imposed regulatory requirements that attempt to ensure that financial, personal and confidential.
United States
US laws and regulations include:
- Malware
- Metasploit Project
- MPack (software), A PHP-based crimeware
- Targeted attacks
- Tiny Banker Trojan, A small banking trojan
- Phishing
- Spyware
- Zeus (malware), Perhaps the best known banking trojan
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