Government Powered Hackers Collaborate With Cybercriminals

Governments around the world make use of the malware planted by cybercriminals in the computers of corporations that might hold sensitive information, highly valued by their adversaries but at the same time useless to the small-time gangs.

Recent discoveries revealed that hackers sponsored by states give out attack codes in exchange for control over malicious elements present in networks that might store data important only to someone who knows what to look for.

According to The Register, these spies work closely with groups who launch attacks only for profit, as these already own a large number of infected machines which might not be of any use to them, but which might contain blueprints and plans that are invaluable to others.

The state-sponsored actors are called APTs (advanced persistent threat) and they prefer to collaborate with small-time criminals in order to save time on building new exploits.

Why bother making new "toys" when there are hundreds available for purchase in exchange for money or information?

Popular application flaws and vulnerabilities are traded for already compromised devices housed by state authority related computer networks.

Such an example is given by Darien Kindlund, a senior staff scientist at FireEye, a network security company.

While securing the network of a government contractor, they've detected a Trojan mainly used in large scale attacks. Only three weeks later, the same virus, identified as Trojan.FakeAV.BU, was seen running loose on the internet, infecting various hosts.

"This happens regularly," Kindlund stated.

"It typically occurs in a multi-month cycle. We suspect this window will get shorter, but if you're dealing with exploits that take a long time to patch, then we could see that window being even longer," he further revealed.

Stefan Savage from the University of California and security journalist Brian Krebs, both wrote pieces on the matter, documenting the wide availability of already-infected machines, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.