Malware

U.S. prosecutors filed an indictment yesterday for two alleged Syrian Electronic Army hacktivists who are accused of compromising news media websites and social media accounts in order to spread propaganda supporting the regime of Sryian president Bashar al-Assad.

Ruslans Bondars, 37, a of the former USSR who had been residing in Riga, Latvia, Wednesday was convicted of one count of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and one count of computer intrusion with intent to cause damage and aiding and abetting.

Researchers last month detected a new malware that steals not only browser credentials, browser cookies and text files, but also cache and key files from the desktop version of end-to-end encrypted instant messaging service Telegram.

The RIG exploit kit has been causing trouble again, this time delivering a backdoor trojan called Grobios, which takes great pains to avoid detection and evade virtual and sandbox environments.

A recently discovered email phishing campaign was found targeting Apple ID credentials, while using AES encryption to thwart active countermeasures against their malicious website.

Researchers have come across a new ransomware variant named Vega Stealer that is taking special aim at those in the marketing, advertising, public relations and retail/manufacturing industries.