New breeds of malware
Here are two kinds malware that caught my attention recently, which I had never thought about:
- World of Warcraft password stealing trojan (via Bruce Schneier), most likely to make money off of selling the virtual goods,
- "Ransomware" (via Wired), encrypting valuable files on the infected machine and selling the decryption keys.
These fit the trend of the last couple of years, the rise of profit as a motive for attacks. Profit definitely changes the threat modelling picture: for example, the traditional threat of sensitive documents being leaked or deleted morphs into extortion. I guess the mitigation stays the same in that case though: make backups.
I wonder what other kind of wacky or imaginative attacks hackers are coming up with these days and we may not even know anything about yet.
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World of Warcraft password stealing trojan (via Bruce Schneier)
Somebody using this programm stole my account in WoW =(
Posted by: Olga (December 23, 2005 01:09 AM)