A New Malicious Malware – Governments Beware!
Kaspersky Lab, a leading Web Security firm has identified a highly potent and dangerous malware called MiniDuke responsible for attack on multiple government entities and institutions worldwide during the past week. According to Kaspersky Lab’s analysis, a number of high profile targets have already been compromised by the MiniDuke attacks, including government entities in Ukraine, Belgium, Portugal, Romania, the Czech Republic and Ireland. In addition, a research institute, two think tanks, and healthcare provider in the United States were also compromised, as was a prominent research foundation in Hungary.
“This is a very unusual cyberattack,” said Eugene Kaspersky, Founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab. “I remember this style of malicious programming from the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. I wonder if these types of malware writers, who have been in hibernation for more than a decade, have suddenly awoken and joined the sophisticated group of threat actors active in the cyberworld. These elite, “old school” malware writers were extremely effective in the past at creating highly complex viruses, and are now combining these skills with the newly advanced sandbox-evading exploits to target government entities or research institutions in several countries.”
Malware is one of the top concerns for IT professionals according to one of the reports by Kaspersky Lab. As per their study, the average medium-sized business is spending just over $90,000 every year on IT security, which works out to about $49.61 per employee. Preventing IT security breaches has been top on all IT professionals agenda followed by data protection and ROI. Clearly security still remains a sensitive issue and it’s always advisable to get a security audit and assessment done on regular basis.
