Version of Target Malware Linked to Young Russian Wall Street Journal (01/22/14) Yadron, Danny; Levinson, Charles; Sonne, Paul Cybersecurity researchers have traced part of the malware used to steal the payment card data of millions of Target customers to Rinat Shabaev of southern Russia. Shabaev sold a version of the malware used in the Target attack, dubbed Kaptoxa, for $2,000 under the username Ree4. Shabaev, who would not have broken any laws just by writing such software, said in a Jan. 21 interview that he did not invent the program. However, he did admit to creating a plugin that would allow Kaptoxa to save data to a file and places it on a server. Security experts say that this addition to the program helped it go undetected on Targets systems. Shabaev claims that he sold the plug in, which he said was designed to be used in penetration testing, but did not have anything to do with how it was ultimately used. Let other people use it so its on their conscience, he said. Many cybersecurity researchers buy and use malware to test the security of computer systems, so it is not strictly illegal to sell such malware, only to use it to break into systems without the organizations consent.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 20:20:09 +0000
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