PlugX and its implications

A new Remote Administration Tool has been discovered called PlugX which is a Remote Access Tool (RAT). It has also been named as Korplug. PlugX has been detected in targeted attacks not only against military, government or political organizations, but also against more or less ordinary companies. The attack starts with a phishing email containing a malicious attachment, usually an archived, bundled or specially crafted document that exploits either a vulnerability.

PlugX has been witnessed to be delivered with the three file components, namely:

• A legitimate file
• A malicious DLL that is loaded by the legitimate file
• A binary file that contains the malicious codes loaded by the DLL.

Cyber Espionage

"Kaspersky Security Bulletin" talks about Cyber-espionage or "hacktivism" and naton-state cyberattacks, apart from legal surveillance, cloud based network attacks, cyber extortion of individuals and companies. The number of reported cases of cyberespionage is growing, with high-value, highly visible data emerging as the primary target, say  Patricia Titus, VP, chief information security office, Unisys. Cyberespionage perpetrators are people with excellent technical skills and psychological understanding of human behavior capable of manipulating their targets within an organization, since the universal statement is people are always the weakest security link. An increased use of zero-day exploits, coupled with malware which is often not detected by anti-virus vendors is used for building cyber espionage tools. The mobile malware will start shaping the digital security landscape in the forthcoming years painting a different picture. This apart there is a surge in fake security certificates, coupled with skillfully coded malware fostering the nationally authorized cyber attacks leading to a cold cyber war across developed countries.