The Neosploit Malware Kit Updated with Snapshot ActiveX Exploit

Raising Symantec's ThreatCon based on a newly introduced exploit within a (random) copy of a popular web malware exploitation kit? Now that's interesting given that there are other modified versions of the publicly available malware kit empowered with exploits as they get released, the single most logical move a administrator of such kit would do is diversity the exploits set as often as possible, keeping it up to date - like they do. ThreatCon is raised already :



"Symantec honeypots have captured further exploitation of the Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access ActiveX Control Arbitrary File Download Vulnerability (BID 30114). Before this event, this exploit was known to be used only in isolated attacks. Further analysis of these honeypot compromises has revealed that the exploit has been added to a variant of the neosploit exploit kit, it will very likely reach a larger number of victims. This version will compromise vulnerable English versions of Microsoft Windows by downloading a malicious application into the Windows Startup folder. Computers that have Microsoft Access installed are potentially affected by this vulnerability. Customers are advised to manually set the kill bit on the following CLSIDs until a vendor update is available: F0E42D50-368C-11D0-AD81-00A0C90DC8D9 F0E42D60-368C-11D0-AD81-00A0C90DC8D9 F2175210-368C-11D0-AD81-00A0C90DC8D9"



Why based on a random copy of the kit? Well, the Neosploit malware kit itself is a commodity despite it's publicly announced varying price in the thousands, it leaked for public use just like MPack and Icepack did originally, making statements on the exact type of the vulnerabilities included within a bit pointless, since it will only cover the the exploits included in a particular version only. Web malware exploitation kits are very modular, namely, anyone can introduce new exploits, and tweak them, which is what they've been doing for a while, mostly converging third party traffic management systems with the malware kits in order to improve both, the metrics, and the evasive practices used for making a particular campaign a bit more time consuming to analyze.



Just like the innovations introduced within open source malware, and their localizations to native languages, the open source nature of web malware exploitation kit can result in countless number of variants whose new features make it sometimes difficult to assess whether or not it's a modified kit or an entirely new one - depending on the sophistication of the features of course. The introduction of new exploits within a copy of a particular malware kit should be considered as something logical, and if it's that big a deal, there are many other web malware exploitation kits whose features turn Neosploit into the "outdated choice" for malicious attackers.



Related posts:

The Zeus Crimeware Kit Vulnerable to Remotely Exploitable Flaw

The Small Pack Web Malware Exploitation Kit

Crimeware in the Middle - Zeus

The Nuclear Grabber Kit

The Apophis Kit

The FirePack Exploitation Kit Localized to Chinese

MPack and IcePack Localized to Chinese

The FirePack Exploitation Kit - Part Two

The FirePack Web Malware Exploitation Kit

The WebAttacker in Action

Nuclear Malware Kit

The Random JS Malware Exploitation Kit

Metaphisher Malware Kit Spotted in the Wild

The Black Sun Bot

The Cyber Bot

Google Hacking for MPacks, Zunkers and WebAttackers

The IcePack Malware Kit in Action

Are Stolen Credit Card Details Getting Cheaper?

What is shaping the prices of stolen credit card details? The investments the cybercriminals or real life scammers ( through credit card cloning or ATM skimming) put into the process of obtaining the details, or can we even talk about investments being made where an experienced scammer has just purchased 1GB of raw credit cards data from a novice botnet master who isn't really aware of the actual value of his "botnet output"?



Depends on which economic theory you believe in, or whether or not you'll take the "bottom-up approach" or the "top-down" one. And since I'm not aware of the existence of "the invisible hand of the underground market" and centralized power to increase the supply or decrease it to boost prices for the stolen credit card details, also indicating the existence of underground cartels putting everyone in a "price taker" position.



The basics of demand and supply for anything underground will always apply unless of course, The more they want, the cheaper it gets, the less they want, the higher the price on per credit card basis gets, since the investment on behalf of the malicious party that originally stolen them is virtually the same, and he can theoretically break-even in every single case since the credit card details were obtained efficiently. It's up to the seller to follow or entirely ignore economic behavior, and do what they feel like doing with this good which must on the other hand reach its market liquidity as soon as possible, else it becomes obsolete. The current market model can be further explained as a good example of competitive equilibrium :



"Competitive market equilibrium is the traditional concept of economic equilibrium, appropriate for the analysis of commodity markets with flexible prices and many traders, and serving as the benchmark of efficiency in economic analysis. It relies crucially on the assumption of a competitive environment where each trader decides upon a quantity that is so small compared to the total quantity traded in the market that their individual transactions have no influence on the prices."



This can be easily explained in a single sentence - it's a mess and every participant is doing whatever they want to, so generalizing on the prices charged for stolen credit card numbers would be unrealistic, since it's the price a single seller with no real impact on the "average" market price for the same good. As for the average market price itself, it would be hard to measure it depending on the quality of the sample you want to rely on, since this is a type of market where sellers don't have to report price changes in their goods for the purpose of statistical research.



A recently released report by Finjan, with whom I've been on the same page of several high profile incidents so far, touches this very same topic :



"Prices charged by cybercriminals selling hacked bank and credit card details have fallen sharply as the volume of data on offer has soared, forcing them to look elsewhere to boost profit margins, a new report says. Researchers for Finjan, a Web security firm, said the high volumes traded had led to bank and credit card information becoming "commoditized" - account details with PIN codes that once fetched $100 or more each might now go for $10 or $20. In its latest quarterly survey of Web trends, the California-based company said cybercrime had evolved into "a major shadow economy ruled by business rules and logic that closely mimics the legitimate business world."



Excluding the presence of price discrimination for a while, as well as open topic offers in the lines of "how much for X amount of Y?" answered as "how much are you willing to pay?", it's all a matter of the seller in a particular situation.



Furthermore, in real-life market there's always the scarcity problem, however, in the underground market there's no shortage of resources despite the ever growing wants of the buyers. Generalizing even more, take for instance the butterfly effect of a price change in petrol, and result of which is inevitable increase of prices in every single aspect of your life, but in the underground market mostly due to the malicious economies of scale achieved, a price increase in renting a botnet would have no effect in the prices charged for the stolen credit card details obtained through the infected hosts. How come? Basically, the price and resources for malware infection are prone to decrease, if we take a malware infected host as a static foundation for the basis of any upcoming cybercrime activities using it.



Perhaps the most disturbing part is that the market for stolen credit card details is so mature, and its entry barriers so low these days, that the confidential data that cannot be efficiently obtained through real-life means like credit card cloning or ATM skimming on a large scale, is now purchased online for the purpose of abusing it in real-life by embedding the valid information into plastic cards.