Month: December 2016

Usage of .ch domain names for spamming malware Tofsee stopped

It is rare that a malware family uses .ch or .li domain names in their domain name generation algorithm (DGA). The last time I remember, that we had to take action against a malware using .ch or .li domain names was about 8 years ago. It was Conficker that infected millions of computers worldwide. The malware was generating about 500 .ch and .li domains a day to be potentially used as a command and control server. By then SWITCH joined the conficker working group to prevent the use of domain names by this malware.

Since then we have been watching the use of .ch and .li domain names in malware DGAs and prepared for this by making an agreement with the Registrar of Last Resort (RoLR) to prevent the registration of domain names used in DGA algorithms of malware.

This week the Swiss Govermental Computer Emergency Response Team (GovCERT) informed us about the malware Tofsee using .ch as one of the TLDs in its DGA. Continue reading “Usage of .ch domain names for spamming malware Tofsee stopped”

A file that wasn’t there

One of our minions (he was introduced in this blog entry a while ago) recently came to us asking for advice: he was about to automate yet another task, by using his Python-fu, and realized that he misses entries in the file system as well as in the registry.

Notably, he only sees this behaviour on 64bit-versions of the Windows operating system:

Windows Explorer (64bit) vs Python application (32bit)
Left: Windows Explorer (64bit) lists several folders and files.   Right: Python application (32bit) only lists the folder Microsoft.

The left image shows the folder C:\Windows\System32\Tasks as seen in the Windows Explorer, the right image as seen in a simple 32bit-python application. Only the subfolder Microsoft is listed there. Something is amiss.

 

Below is the code to produce the right image, when executed in a 32bit-version of Python:

import glob, os
for pathfilename in glob.glob(r"C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\*"):
    print pathfilename

Continue reading “A file that wasn’t there”

The December 2016 issue of our SWITCH Security Report is available!

Dear Reader!

A new issue of our monthly SWITCH Security Report has just been released.

The topics covered in this report are:

  • Power and cybercrime – massive quantities of user data stolen in two recent hacks
  • When supposed security add-ons actually spy on your browsing habits
  • Mirai part II – botnet knocks out 900,000 Telekom routers
  • It’s not all bad news – Avalanche botnet taken down

The Security Report is available in both English and German.

»»  Download the english report.      »»  Download the german report.

Did you miss our previous Security Report? Click here to go to the archive.