World’s most advanced hacking spyware let loose
November 23, 2014 6:29 pm
World’s most advanced hacking spyware let loose
Sam Jones in Vienna and Hannah Kuchler in San Francisco
A cyber snooping operation reminiscent of the Stuxnet
worm and billed as the world’s most sophisticated computer malware is targeting
Russian and Saudi Arabian telecoms companies.
Cyber security company Symantec said the malware, called
“Regin”, is probably run by a western intelligence agency and in some respects
is more advanced in engineering terms than Stuxnet, which was developed by US
and Israel government hackers in 2010 to target the Iranian nuclear programme.
The discovery of the latest hacking software comes as the
head of Kaspersky Labs, the Russian company that helped uncover Stuxnet, told
the Financial Times that criminals are now also hacking industrial control
systems for financial gain.
Organised criminals tapping into the networks that run
industrial companies, alongside the development of the latest online snooping
worm, are signs of the increasingly sophisticated nature of cyber attacks.
“Nothing else comes close to this . . . nothing else we
look at compares,” said Orla Cox, director of security response at Symantec,
who described Regin as one of the most “extraordinary” pieces of hacking
software developed, and probably “months or years in the making”.
However, a western security official said it was
difficult to draw conclusions about the origins or purpose of Regin. “It’s
dangerous to assume that because the malware has apparently been used in a
given country, it did not originate there,” the person said. “Certain states
and agencies may well use tools of this sort domestically.”
Symantec said it was not yet clear how Regin infected systems
but it had been deployed against internet service providers and telecoms
companies mainly in Russia and Saudi Arabia as well as Mexico, Ireland and
Iran.
The security software group said Regin could be
customised to target different organisations and had hacked Microsoft email
exchange servers and mobile phone conversations on major international
networks.
“We are probably looking at some sort of western agency,”
Ms Cox said. “Sometimes there is virtually nothing left behind – no clues.
Sometimes an infection can disappear completely almost as soon as you start
looking at it, it’s gone. That shows you what you are dealing with.”
As online threats race up national security agendas and
governments look at ways of protecting their national infrastructures a cyber
arms race is causing concern to the developed world
Meanwhile, Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive of Kaspersky
Labs, warned that the computer networks that control energy plants and
factories are becoming targets for organised crime gangs armed with skilled
hackers. He said there was evidence of “more and more very targeted attacks” of
the networks that run industrial companies.
The attacks go beyond recent data breaches at US bank
JPMorgan and US retailer Home Depot, in which criminals sought credit card
details or personal data to attempt false transactions. Mr Kaspersky said
criminals have used hacking for everything from bypassing security at ports to
stealing grain from a Ukrainian factory by adjusting the digital scales to read
a lower weight.
The most public incident of cyber industrial crime was
exposed when Europol smashed a drugs ring last year that was hacking into the
control systems of the Belgian port of Antwerp, to move containers holding
drugs away from the prying eyes of customs inspectors.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014.
Comments
Post a Comment