Posted by Virus Bulletin on Jan 13, 2012
Defence companies among small number of targets.
Researchers at Alienvault have discovered a version of the 'Sykipot' trojan that is being used to target organisations that make use of smartcards to control the access of both physical and information systems.
The malware is installed onto the victim's machine via a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe software, which is sent to the user via a targeted email. The trojan then uses a keylogger to obtain the PINs used together with the smartcards.
Apart from the keylogger, this version of Sykipot also includes a module that lists the certificates present on the computer; this is useful for the attacker as whenever a smartcard is inserted into a reader attached to the computer, a local certificate is stored. When the trojan receives a certain command from a command and control server, a new dll is implemented that allows the attacker to log in and access information protected with a smartcard.
The smartcards targeted in this particular attacks are made by a company called ActivIdentity. Among its clients, the company lists a number of US defence organisations as well as other government organisations and some large companies.
More at Alientvault here and at ZDNet here. More information on Sykipot and the Adobe zero-day vulnerabilities used can be found at Symantec here and at Threatpost here.
Posted on 13 January 2012 by Virus Bulletin
