http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/stock_manipulat.html By George Hulme InformationWeek June 21, 2010 A Belgian federal investigation into an electronic bank account heist reveals a sophisticated attack designed to manipulate stock prices, a Belgian newspaper reported over the weekend. This news report in the Belgian newspaper De Tijd described a highly-targeted botnet that was designed to infiltrate software trading platforms. According to the story, and I'm relying on a Google translation for this, authorities said there were 20 Belgian victims who were infected, and the cyber-thieves used those accounts to manipulate share prices and profit about 100,000 Euros. The attacks were targeted at these investors, and the code was custom written, according to the story. The infections and the centralized control over the botnet made it possible for the botmaster to time all of the infected systems to buy or sell shares concurrently. This attack is another example of just how sophisticated cyber attacks have become, and how useless traditional anti-virus systems are in combating modern threats. Many security experts aren't offering viable answers to these problems. In response to the attack, a Trend Micro blog in Europe suggests each banking transaction be verified to stop such attacks: [...] _________________________________________________________________ Attend Black Hat USA 2010, hosted at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada July 24-29th, offering over 60 training sessions and 11 tracks of Briefings from security industry elite. To sign up visit http://www.blackhat.comReceived on Mon Jun 21 2010 - 22:26:27 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Jun 21 2010 - 22:32:16 PDT