DDOS attacks, data leaks, and The Jester complete the list

May 20, 2012 07:11 GMT  ·  By

Security Brief” continues with some of the most important events and incidents that marked the week between May 14 and May 20, 2012.

Many security companies detailed their findings as far as mobile malware is concerned. We‘ve seen that shady Android markets are showing up everywhere in the world, targeting users from China, Russia, and many other countries.

One of the most interesting pieces of malware we saw in the week that almost passed was Android.Opfake. Masquerading itself as a “Talking Tom Cat” app, Opfake redirects users to the legitimate application hosted on Google Play, but not before displaying a fake installation process during which an SMS to a premium rate number is sent.

We’ve also reported that cybercriminals are using Twitter to spread links that point to malicious elements posing as Android antivirus programs.

Our old enemy, the FakeInst SMS Trojan also made a few headlines this week, after security experts found it on a number of alternative app markets.

As far as protests are concerned, we’ve had a lot of them in the past days. First, MalSec hackers leaked data from the Arizona State Legislature, leaving a simple, yet concise message for the US government.

“[Expletive] u, and [expletive] ur gov! We still are Anonymous! We do not forgive. We do not forget! U should have expected us!” they said.

Many of the protests were sustained by the “classic” distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. The Anonymous Team disrupted the websites of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, and Theresa May MP.

On Friday, they “charged their lazors” and pointed them towards the Department for Work and Pensions (dwp.gov.uk).

The Indian government also felt the wrath of hackers. First, a security expert that goes by the name of Isac penetrated the systems of Reliance, one of the ISPs that was among the first to instate blockades on sites such as Vimeo, Pastebin and The Pirate Bay.

Then, on May 17, India’s Supreme Court (supremecourtofindia.nic.in) and the country’s All India Congress Committee (aicc.org.in) were taken down as part of the same protest.

We’ve also learned that Azerbaijani hackers consider gay parades as being a “sinful” act so they attacked a number of websites connected to the Eurovision contest.

Although Anonymous has been quite busy, there is one particular group that stands out this week: UGNazi. The fact that they were arrested didn’t seem to discourage them and to prove it, they launched DDOS attacks on the sites of Visa and CIA.

They also leaked data from the government of Anguilla, Washington Military Department (mi.wa.gov), and they took over the Twitter account of the famous rapper Hopsin.

In the category of “DDOS attacks with an unknown/uncertain origin,” we have the ones that affected The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks.

On Friday, we were somewhat surprised to see that AlQaedaSec hackers changed sides, took the name of KonySec, and disrupted a number of websites that aren’t usually a target of online activists: NATO Protests, Occupy Wall Street, and a number of anti-Joseph Kony domains.

Finally, The Jester (th3j35t3r) has been “goofing around” this week, disappearing, reappearing, and staging plots from behind the scenes.