Malware

12/23/2016 - There were quite some changes in the area of malware, cyber crime, and IT security in 2016. At the same time the technological progress moved in giant leaps. Apart from desktop PCs and notebooks, smart and connected technologies have been established in both private and industrial environments. Read the predictions for the most important topics in the upcoming year.

12/16/2016 - A current spam wave floods email inboxes: Fake invoices with genuine user data (names and even postal addresses) are used as bait. The attackers furthermore misuse existing companies' names and data to complete the sophisticated scam. Victims will be infected with the Maktub Ransomware, currently not decryptable. Read more about this case in our German G DATA Blog.

12/08/2016 - A new ransomware is currently targeting German companies. This latest malware from the James Bond-themed Janus Cybercrime Collective combines two existing ransomwares (Petya and Misha) and leaves infected systems completely unusable: GoldenEye first encrypts files and then the hard drive. Read more on this in our German blog.

12/06/2016 - The fact that there are many free apps on unofficial market platforms appeals to many users. This is especially true since a lot of the apps would cost money on Google Play. There is a downside to this, however, as recent findings about a new Android malware called "Gooligan" have shown.

12/05/2016 - Oftentimes, there is talk about a "sophisticated" malware-based attack against an individual or an organization. The prevalent assumption is that a great deal of development work has gone into the attack tools. In the 4th part of the article series, Marion Marschalek and Raphael Vinot will demonstrate what 'sophistication' means and what it actually looks like.

12/01/2016 - Botnets are a real menace. An international group of law enforcement agencies and private IT security parties has dismantled the Avalanche botnet yesterday. Germany alone had suffered damages of millions of Euros from this botnet. After the takedown, users have to clean their PC from the remains. Read about the takedown and information about the malware removal in our German SecurityBlog.

11/30/2016 [UPDATE: 12/01/2016] - Yesterday a Firefox 0-Day was made publicly available. We have analyzed the exploit from begin to end and talk about the different stages, including: the exploit techniques that aim to defeat general protection mechanisms like ASLR and DEP, as well as more advanced protection mechanisms like Export Address Filtering from EMET, the shellcode and its similarity to the FBI-Exploit from 3 years ago.

11/24/2016 - Holiday season is about to start and online shopping for Christmas is trending! Our experts forewarn you about current phishing and malware threats in our German G DATA SecurityBlog.

11/18/2016 [UPDATE: 11/24/2016] - Locky has been a constant in the malware zoo for a considerable time. And while we are aware that there are still victims being hit by the variant sporting the .ODIN extension, in this post we are going to have a look on its statistical data and an in-depth analysis at yet another two later flavors: .SH*T and .THOR. Furthermore, an update to this article takes a look at the recently released...

11/23/2016 - A game of cat and mouse has been going on ever since the first ever malware started circulating in the wild and the first Antivirus appeared on the market. Although it may seem that brand new malware families appear on a daily basis, the truth looks somewhat different. A lot of the malware which is in circulation is a reiteration of something that has existed for quite some time. After all,...