Researchers Discover Massive DarkHotel Operation

The state-sponsored group DarkHotel has been an active thorn in the side of security firms since 2007, not to mention the victims of the group. The group has gone by many names, however, it has been much of the work done by Kaspersky Labs in analyzing the group’s activity that has led to DarkHotel sticking. Now, it would appear that the group has been conducting a massive hacking operation targeting Chinese government agencies across the globe. It is believed attacks began in March, looking to leverage the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to lure victims. Since the pandemic became a global emergency, hackers of all kinds, whether script-kiddies to advanced persistent threat (APT) groups have looked to take advantage of people’s fears regarding the disease. This trend is likely to continue as long as the pandemic rages across borders. The latest campaign was discovered by Chinese security firm Qihoo 360, who subsequen...

Search Power+ Browser Hijacker

Search Power+ is a potentially unwanted application (PUA), a browser hijacker. It hijacks a browser by changing certain browsers settings to searchpowerapp.com, address of a fake search engine. Quite often apps of this type collect various information too. Browser hijackers are categorized as PUAs because users tend to download and install them unknowingly (inadvertently). Search Power+ promotes its fake search engine by setting searchpowerapp.com as an address of a default search engine, homepage and new tab. It means that users who installed Search Power+ on their browsers are forced to visit searchpowerapp.com when they open a browser, new tab and/or enter search queries into URL bar. In most cases browser hijackers do not allow users to undo, modify settings that were assigned by them as long as they are installed. It means that a hijacked browser can be stopped from opening a certain address (fake s...