VB2016 video: Last-minute paper: Malicious proxy auto-configs: an easy way to harvest banking credentials

“Much media attention is given to imminent and visible threats, like ransomware. Other threats remain under the radar and often go unnoticed.” This part of Jaromír Horejší and Jan Širmer’s

VB2016 abstract

is perhaps even more relevant today than it was in September 2016, when it was written.

Despite the seriousness of

WannaCry

, there are many other threats that users face, and banking trojans are one of them. In their VB2016 last-minute presentation,

Avast

researchers Jaromír and Jan looked at Retefe, a trojan that has targeted banks in several European countries and used malicious proxy auto-config files (combined with a rogue root certificate) to redirect users’ traffic to a server controlled by the attackers, thus allowing them to stealthily perform man-in-the-middle attacks.

This method isn’t new (

Kaspersky Lab

researchers Fabio Assolini and Andrey Makhnutin

spoke about it

at VB2013), but remains a popular way for banking malware to empty victims’ accounts.

The video of Jaromír and Jan’s presentation is now available to watch on our

YouTube

channel.

On the subject of banking trojans, at VB2017 in Madrid,

ESET

researchers Peter Kalnai and Michal Poslusny will guide the audience through

the attack points

in browsers that are being taken advantage of by some of the major banking trojans in the wild.

VB2017

will take place in Madrid, 4-6 October 2017.

Register now

for an Early Bird discount!