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Trend Micro was first to publish three of the Hacking Team Flash bugs. The company’s chief cybersecurity officer Tom Kellermann likens the history of laxness of Adobe’s security practices in light of Flash’s popularity to poisoning the water supply for all of a village’s wells.

“The dark web is impressively expansive and organizations of this size, conducting schemes of this magnitude, are hidden throughout it in unprecedented numbers,” said Trend Micro chief cybersecurity officer, Tom Kellermann. “With the amount of exploit kits on the market today, the financial sector must brace itself for an increased level of more intensified attacks.”

Trend Micro threat analyst Jay Yaneza said the combination of more developers using .NET in applications and the ease by which hackers can find vulnerabilities in open source software has led to a boom in point of sale (POS) malware targeting Microsoft's .NET software.

Hacking Team intrusion malware can also target iOS and Android devices. Here are the dirty details about Android attacks, from Trend Micro. Note that it warns that if you've been infected, it will be extremely difficult to clean the infection yourself. You'll have to have root privilege to the device and get help from your phone's manufacturer to flash the firmware.

On the other hand, the European Union, with its Right to Be Forgotten rules, has a "much more stringent framework than we do in the United States because we let companies get away with a lot more" here, says Paul Ferguson, a senior threat research advisor at Trend Micro.

But that may be a race that it cannot win. Paul Ferguson, senior adviser for Trend Micro, a security software provider, said that information on Ashley Madison, deleted in one online forum, is beginning to bubble up in others. Once something is published on the Internet,” he said, “it’s there forever.”

FBN’s Jo Ling Kent, Liz Claman and Trend Micro Chief Cybersecurity Officer Tom Kellerman discuss the Ashley Madison hack. [Video]

These new findings, which come from the security research company Trend Micro, indicate that Hacking Team build a fake Android news app. It was called "BeNews," which happens to also be the name of another, now defunct news site. It appears that Hacking Team was able to build the fake app so that it looked legitimate enough to be accepted into the Google Play app store. Nestled inside the app's code, however, was a backdoor to make it a mobile spy tool.

In life and in fiction, the numbered Swiss bank account stands as an untouchable repository for funds, legally obtained or otherwise. Modern criminals likewise need a secure repository, not necessarily for funds but for online resources. A recent report from Trend Micro delves deeply into the world of Bulletproof Hosting Service (BPHS) providers. We don't yet know precisely how and where Darkode's resources were stored, but a BPHS was almost certainly involved.

Forums like Darkode represent one leg of the stool that is the problem of criminal hacking, says Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro, because these shutdowns send a warning to American cybercriminals that they may be arrested.