
Taking advantage of the Ukraine-Russian conflict, hackers in Russia are infecting computers by installing malware through links included in spam emails.
The messages are designed to look they are being sent by Russian supporters, according to Bitdefender Labs researchers.
Believing they are making their feelings known to governments in the West by downloading the software, users click through to websites that result in a Trojan designed to steal personal data.
Once the user’s computer has been infected, the malware is capable of performing a variety of functions such as sending out spam emails, acquiring bitcoin wallets, and communicating with other infected computers.
It also has the ability to acquire email and FTP details, in addition to login data stored on browsers, as well as download and run further malicious files.
Bitdefender security analyst Bianca Stanescu told SCMagazine.com:
“Surprisingly enough, we discovered that over 40 percent of the analysed infected IPs who are part of the botnet belong to Ukraine. This can either be an anti-Russian diversion crafted by Ukrainian cyberwar ‘soldiers’ or, more likely, a sign that many of the infected machines belong to Ukraine and now unwillingly distribute the malware.”
Hackers are only too willing to take advantage of any situation or vulnerability, and that situation doesn’t need to be an international conflict. The reality is that any business is a potential target of cyber criminal activity, and needs to protect its data as much as possible. By opening up cyber security jobs, company bosses are taking the necessary measures to ensure that data fails to be compromised.
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