2012
01.11

“Post transaction attacks, as the name implies, occur after the evil deed has already been done and the account holder has closed the online banking session. These are designed to conceal illegitimate activity for as long as possible to either allow money to transfer to its final destination – uninterrupted, or continue to control the account and perform further transactions.” said Amit Klein Trusteer’s CTO.

 

Malware post-transaction attack in detail

Step 1: Malware post-login attack – credentials stolen

a. Fraudsters infect the victim’s machine with Man in the Browser malware (any MitB malware, e.g. Zeus, SpyEye, Carberp), with a suitable configuration.

b. The malware is configured to ask the customer for debit card data during the login phase (HTML injection) – e.g. card number, CVV2, expiration month and year, etc.

Step 2: Fraudster commits fraudulent activity

c. With the customer’s debit card details, the cybercriminals then commit card-not-present transaction fraud by making a purchase or transferring money over the telephone or the internet.

d. The fraudsters immediately feed the fraudulent transaction details to the malware control panel.

Step 3: Malware post-transaction attack with fraud hidden from view

e. The next time the victim visits their online banking site, the malware hides (“replaces”) the fraudulent transactions in the “view transactions” page, as well as artificially changing the total fraudulent transaction amount to balance the totals. As a result, the deceived customer has no idea that their account has been ‘taken over’, nor that any fraudulent transactions have taken place

via SpyEye Trojan post transaction fraud schemes attack banks.

2012
01.11

The malware is appropriately called “Gameover” because once it’s on your computer, it can steal usernames and passwords and defeat common methods of user authentication employed by financial institutions. And once the crooks get into your bank account, it’s definitely “game over.”Gameover is a newer variant of the Zeus malware, which was created several years ago and specifically targeted banking information.

via FBI — ‘Gameover’ Malware Targets Bank Accounts.

2012
01.05

[..]In the new version of the Trojan, the authors focus on eliminating the weakest link – a centralized system of information distribution.
Previous versions of Zeus were based on one (or few) predefined addresses which were used for botnet management. This allowed for relatively easy tracking and blocking of servers, thus rendering the botnet useless. However, the analysed variant of the Trojan used two new channels of communication to receive orders (figure on right):

  1. Communication in a peer-to-peer network
  2. Domain names Generation Mechanism

This variant has been analyzed to some extent by other researchers before – there is information on the web on the new variant of Zeus (eg abuse.ch ), however – based on our knowledge – previous research has focused on registering and monitoring traffic to Zeus domains. In our work we focus on understanding the P2P network communication mechanisms, mapping out the network, and monitoring the exchange of information in this particular network. [..]

via CERT Polska » Blog Archive » ZeuS – P2P+DGA variant – mapping out and understanding the threat.