Blackhole collapses: Hacker behind world's largest malware threat reportedly arrested in Russia

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.itproportal.com/2013/10/09/blackhole-collapses-hacker-behind-worlds-largest-malware-threat-reportedly-arrested-in-russia/

By Paul Cooper
itproportal.com
09 Oct 2013

The man thought to be behind the infamous Blackhole malware toolkit has 
been arrested in Russia, an inside source has revealed.

The source - a former police detective with contacts in the Russian 
government - said that the man arrested was the notorious hacker who goes 
by the online handle 'Paunch'.

Blackhole is an exploit kit that allows hackers to carry out so-called 
'drive-by' attacks on computers, a style of infiltration that accounts for 
more than half of all attacks taking place on users. These drive-by hacks 
can include the downloading of anything from viruses to botnet Trojans and 
keyloggers onto infected machines.

The rootkit was once considered the largest malware threat in the world, 
according to security firm Sophos, and until recently, 91 per cent of web 
threats detected by AVG were thought to be due to the toolkit. However, 
the its popularity seems to have waned in recent months, due to 
competition from other toolkits exploiting similar weaknesses.

As one of the main operators of Blackhole, Paunch was responsible for 
keeping the malware up to date, introducing it to new security weaknesses 
in commonly-used programs and tightening its defences against fixes and 
antivirus software.

[...]



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