Stock Manipulation Botnet Surfaces

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/06/stock_manipulat.html

By George Hulme
InformationWeek
June 21, 2010

A Belgian federal investigation into an electronic bank account heist 
reveals a sophisticated attack designed to manipulate stock prices, a 
Belgian newspaper reported over the weekend.

This news report in the Belgian newspaper De Tijd described a 
highly-targeted botnet that was designed to infiltrate software trading 
platforms. According to the story, and I'm relying on a Google 
translation for this, authorities said there were 20 Belgian victims who 
were infected, and the cyber-thieves used those accounts to manipulate 
share prices and profit about 100,000 Euros.

The attacks were targeted at these investors, and the code was custom 
written, according to the story. The infections and the centralized 
control over the botnet made it possible for the botmaster to time all 
of the infected systems to buy or sell shares concurrently. This attack 
is another example of just how sophisticated cyber attacks have become, 
and how useless traditional anti-virus systems are in combating modern 
threats.

Many security experts aren't offering viable answers to these problems. 
In response to the attack, a Trend Micro blog in Europe suggests each 
banking transaction be verified to stop such attacks:

[...]


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