Media Coverage

Security researchers from antivirus firm Trend Micro recently detected an attack against companies from 18 countries where key employees were targeted with emails that contained a commercial keylogger program called Olympic Vision.

On Sunday and Monday, the Times, the BBC, AOL and a host of other major news and entertainment websites inadvertently ran malicious ads that attempted to hijack the computers of visitors and demand a ransom, according to security researchers Malwarebytes and Trend Micro.

The malicious advertisements are connected to servers hosting the Angler exploit kit, a software package that probes a computer for software vulnerabilities in order to deliver malware, Trend Micro said.

On Monday, Trend Micro researchers said in a blog post that Pawn Storm, well-known for spying upon political targets across the world, is now targeting several government offices -- including the Prime Minister's office and the Turkish parliament -- as well as one of the largest media publications in the country.

On Tuesday, Trend Micro researchers released a whitepaper documenting the results of an investigation into the Web's underbelly, asking if the underground is connected globally, or whether there are countries which have a certain illegal "specialization" in goods or services.

"Over the years, Windows has become a harder target to attack, and less and less of what's connected to the Internet runs Windows," said Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro.

Trend Micro has been instrumental in bringing down several hostile cyber operations, including, with U.K. partner The National Crime Agency, Refud.me and Cryptex Reborn. Working with Interpol, Kaspersky Lab, Microsoft and the Cyber Defense Institute, the SIMDA botnet was also eliminated.

Researchers at Trend Micro, one of the world's biggest security software firms, said this week that the software used to infect the Ukrainian utilities has also been found in the networks of a large Ukrainian mining company and a rail company.

Four third-party app stores for Android have apps with a malicious component that seeks root access to devices, according to Trend Micro.

It’s the model that Christopher Budd suggests that companies use when thinking about the threats they face. Budd, a global threat communications manager with Trend Micro, has called this a natural evolution. As there’s more money to be made, criminals will get increasingly sophisticated in how to make it.