Following up on Red October the large-scale cyber-espionage infestation reported by Kaspersky
malware, The H Security says that the command and control systems behind the apparently five-year-old digital spying ring has began closing down.
The campaign was not limited to laptops and desktops, but also stole data from mobile phones connected to those computers, with special tools for iPhones and Nokia smartphones.
The
dark genii
didn't only rely on a typical backdoor program, but also made use of an unusual arsenal, including plugins for Adobe's Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Office that anti-virus programs rarely detected. The plugins waited for the document to be opened and then decrypted and executed the malicious code.