Monster haul of data reaped from job site
Trojan gathers 1.6 million sets of jobseeker records.
Researchers at Symantec have reported discovering a server carrying 1.6 million entries from the popular
jobseeking website Monster.com, gathered by a trojan using stolen login information.
The trojan, dubbed 'Infostealer.Monstres' by Symantec, uses logins to Monster's sites for recruiters,
which allow information on millions of members to be searched and, in this case, harvested in large numbers.
The details include contact information such as email and postal addresses, phone numbers, and in many cases
full resumes, providing potentially devastating fuel for identity theft and targeted phishing attacks.
The data is uploaded by the trojan to a remote server, on which the Symantec analysts found the cache of
stolen data, thought to cover many hundreds of thousands of job candidates. The information may then be used
to create targeted spear-phishing attacks, with fake job offers scattered with personal information about the
recipient emailed out. Part of the conditions for the 'job' being advertised involve handing over bank
account information.
The trojan used in the attack bears similarities to the 'Gpcoder' (aka 'Sinowal') ransomware attack
seen last month, which was spammed out posing as a tool from
Monster.com, often using highly targeted information on the recipient. Once installed, the trojan encrypted
files found on infected systems, demanding money for decryption keys.
The data haul has been widely reported in the mainstream media, including the
BBC. The original Symantec blog
posting on the discovery is
here, with
analysis of the phishing spams using the stolen data
here and details of
the trojan itself
here.
22 August 2007
Tags:
identity theft, phishing, ransomware, spam, spearphishing, symantec, trojan.
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