Promethium Attacks Surge

Following the advisory issued by the Australian Government warning that Australian businesses and government departments were currently been targeted by malware favored by several Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups, researchers at several security firms have uncovered more APT activity. This time related to the group code-named Promethium. In two separate reports it has been revealed the Promethium, also referred to as StrongPity, has been seen deploying a set of new weaponized trojans that abuse the popularity of legitimate applications. The group is believed to have been active since 2012, with some reports even suggesting the group was formed as early as 2002. Traditionally, Promethium has focused activity on targeting organizations and individuals in Turkey and Syria. Some campaigns even included targets in Italy and Belgium. The group’s main objective is intelligence gathering and has been expos...

StreaminSearchs Browser Hijacker

StreaminSearchs is a piece of rogue software, classified as a browser hijacker. Following successful infiltration, it makes alterations to browser settings in order to promote streaminsearchs.com - a fake search engine. Additionally, most browser hijackers have data tracking abilities and it is highly likely that StreaminSearchs has such as well. Due to the questionable techniques used to proliferate StreaminSearchs, it is also deemed to be a PUA (Potentially Unwanted Application). Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and other popular browsers with significant user bases - are common targets of browser hijackers. They reassign browsers' homepage, default search engine and new tab/window URLs - to the addresses of illegitimate web searchers. In case of StreaminSearchs, it makes these modifications as well - to promote streaminsearchs.com. These seemingly minor changes diminish the browsing e...