Indian Cybercrime Scene

Vinoo Thomas Rahul MohandasResearch Lead Research ScientistMcAfee Labs McAfee Labs

Caught In the Cross-Fire

Agenda

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• Knowing the enemy – Who’s at your front door?• India in the information age• World “Wild” Web – Indian users caught in the cross fire• India’s contribution to worldwide Spam, Botnet and DDOS attacks • Regional malware • Targeted attacks• The future

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm

India’s Growing Cyber Population

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/2008/press/Worldwide%20Internet%20usage%2008.pdf

Why do Indians go online?

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

What do Indians search online?

Breaking news? Think Malware

• Malware authors make use of breaking news or popular search terms to ensure a higher return on investment.

• Popular news items that were misused include:– Searches for Michael Jackson’s death lead to malware– Benazir Bhutto assassination, Bangalore Blasts– Indian celebrities and cricketers

Riskiest Indian Celebrities

7http://www.hindustantimes.com/cinema-news/mirchmasala/Ash-more-dangerous-than-Katrina/Article1-451587.aspx

Popular Indian Sites Compromised to Serve Malware

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World “Wild” Web

• Risks on the Web are constantly changing. A site that is safe one day, can be risky the next.

• It’s not always easy for consumers to identify which site is safe. Even experienced users can be deceived if a trusted site was compromised to serve malware.

• Thousands of legitimate web sites are compromised every day to serve malware to unsuspecting users.

• High-profile Indian sites that been compromised to serve malware include banks, security vendors, portals, businesses, as well as educational and government sites.

Payload and impact of users getting infected

Payload

•Bots•Backdoors•Keyloggers•Password Stealers•Rogue Antivirus Products•Rootkits

Symptoms

•Infected machine become part of a botnet•Abused to send Spam, DDOS, host exploits, and act as launch pad for more attacks.•Infected users often have no clue

Compromised users on a limited bandwidth Internet plan can end up getting a huge bill at the end of month – for no fault of theirs!!

W32/Conficker in India vs. rest of world

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Conficker world infection map

12http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/wiki/uploads/ANY/conficker_world_map.png

W32/Conficker.worm - Infection Data

http://www.team-cymru.org/Monitoring/Malevolence/conficker.html

Twitter-Facebook Episode

• Twitter, Facebook, Live Journal, YouTube, Fotki–what do they have in common?

• Hosted an account of a pro-Georgian blogger who went under the nickname cyxymu (taken after Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, one of Georgia’s pro-Russian breakaway republics).

• They all suffered a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The attack that was able to take down Twitter for several hours and significantly slow down connectivity to YouTube, Live Journal and Facebook .

http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2009/08/07/collateral-damage/

India’s Contribution to DDoS

• India’s Contribution was 8%

http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2009/08/07/collateral-damage/

India’s Spam Contribution

http://www.trustedsource.org`

United States 35%

Brazil 7%

India 7%South Korea

5%

China 4%

Russia 3%

Turkey 3%

Thailand 2%

Romania 2%

Poland 2%

Others30%

Q2 2009

United States 34%

Brazil 7%

China 5%India

4%Russia

4%

Turkey 4%

South Korea 4%

Spain 2%

United Kingdom 2%

Colombia 2%

Others32%

Q1 2009

Phishers target Indian Banks

• Uses pure Social engineering to deceiveusers

• Stolen credentials make itsway to underground forumsand sold there

• Commercial Do-It-YourselfPhish kits available forIndian banks

• Increase in phish emailsobserved during Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode campaign.

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Malware source code freely available

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Malware is localized and targeted

• Exploits using MSWord, Excel,PowerPoint, WordPad areincreasingly popular

• Multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in office discovered and exploited in 2009.

• Mostly spammed to users or hosted on malicious website

• Attachment claims to contain sensitive information on Pakistani Air force.

• Exploits a patched vulnerabilityin Microsoft ms06-028 bulletin.

Targeted Attacks: Microsoft Office

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Targeted Attacks: Adobe PDF

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• >80% users have Adobe Acrobat installed

• Easy to social engineer useras it’s considered trustworthy

• Over 5 new exploits releasedthis year alone includingzero-days.

• Most exploits use JavaScript to spray shellcode on heap

• Heavily deployed in webattack toolkits.

The future.......

Cyber Crime Altering Threat Landscape

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•Over 1,500,000 unique malware detections in 2008⁄ 1H09 up 150% from 1H08

•Malware is heavily obfuscated with packers and compression technologies

•80% of threats are financially motivated, up from 50% two years ago with password stealing Trojans being rampant

•6500+ new variants analyzed daily

2006 2007 2008 2009 1st Half0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

1,600,000

78,381

271,197

1,500,000

1,200,000

Unique Malware Detections

Why take to cybercrime?

Low Risk+ High Reward + Opportunity

=Safer than traditional crime

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Cyber Crime – India Statistics

– India: 63% of businesses have seen an increase in threats from 2008 to 2009

– India: 40% of businesses in India had an incident that cost an average of $13,543 to fix and recover from and causing revenue loss.

– India is the 14th most dangerous domain for web surfing with 3.07% of Indian websites rated Red or Yellow by McAfee Site Advisor.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet/Chasing-the-cyber-criminal/articleshow/5166638.cms

Summary - What does this mean to you?

• The malware problem is here to stay – threats are becoming more region specific and sophisticated.

• Monetary reward is the primary motivation for malware authors.

• India’s growing cyber population makes an attractive target.

• Need to improve user education and awareness at grassroots level.

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McAfee In Action

27http://www.dsci.in/images/stories/mcafee_announces_grant_of_rs._2.5_mn_for_dsci.pdf

McAfee Initiative to Fight Cybercrimehttp://www.mcafee.com/us/about/corporate/fight_cybercrime/

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McAfee Security Resources

Web Sites– McAfee: http://www.mcafee.com– Threat Center: http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/default.asp– Submit a Sample: http://vil.nai.com/vil/submit-sample.aspx– Scan Your PC: http://home.mcafee.com/Downloads/FreeScanDownload.aspx

Notifications– Security Advisories: http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/securityadvisory/signup.aspx

Word of Mouth– Blog: http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/– Podcasts: http://podcasts.mcafee.com/

Q & A

Thank You!

vinoo@avertlabs.com rahul@avertlabs.comVinoo Thomas Rahul Mohandas