Rise of Dyre Banking Malware in Q1-2015 - Trend Micro

Trend Micro in its recently released study says that the nasty Dyre banking Trojan is increasing again after related infections surged during Q1-2015.

This malware (Dyre) has been detected only about a year ago and it targets online banking users and it has more than one method to steal sensitive data. Trend Micro says that there has been incredible increase of 125% in Dyre malware infections as compared to the last quarter of 2014.

Trend Micro says that the group behind the malware has also started to expand its operation to more regions across the world.

During first week of May 2015, security researchers found an increase in the spam volume targeting individuals in Asia Pacific countries with 44% of the emails being sent to this region.

During the same period, 39% of emails targeted users in Europe and 17% targeted users in North America. However, company's data proves that during last three months, cybercriminals showed more interest in Europe and North America as these two regions received 39.48% and 37.84% of Dyre-related spam, respectively.

Trend Micro warns that due to expansion by the cybercriminals across the globe, they can potentially send out more regionalized messages in their next spam emails.

There was also a latest new version of Dyre which was detected in the new set of infected emails besides the alarming rate of increase. The new version, labeled TSPY_DYRE.IK is particularly horrible because it contains many new functions which allow it to bypass detection including the ability to disable firewalls and network-related security tools.

On being installed, it can do variety of functions like man-in-the-middle attacks through browser injections taking screenshots of browser and stealing personal security certificates and credentials of online banking.

V3.co.uk published news on 2nd June, 2015 quoting Bharat Mistry, Cyber Consultant of Trend Micro, as saying: "We also said that the malware switches off default anti-malware feature of Window in trying to make Dyre downloads easier which is an example of just how shrewd cyber criminals are becoming."

Trend Micro advised users to be more vigilant and familiar with their policies for online banking to avoid being cheated by malicious emails.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/11/2015