Sykipot trojan used to target smart cards

Defence companies among small number of targets.

Researchers at

Alienvault

have discovered a version of the ‘Sykipot’ trojan that is being used to target organisations that make use of smartcards to control the access of both physical and information systems.

The malware is installed onto the victim’s machine via a zero-day vulnerability in

Adobe

software, which is sent to the user via a targeted email. The trojan then uses a keylogger to obtain the PINs used together with the smartcards.

Apart from the keylogger, this version of Sykipot also includes a module that lists the certificates present on the computer; this is useful for the attacker as whenever a smartcard is inserted into a reader attached to the computer, a local certificate is stored. When the trojan receives a certain command from a command and control server, a new dll is implemented that allows the attacker to log in and access information protected with a smartcard.

The smartcards targeted in this particular attacks are made by a company called

ActivIdentity

. Among its clients, the company lists a number of US defence organisations as well as other government organisations and some large companies.

More at

Alientvault


here

and at

ZDNet


here

. More information on Sykipot and the

Adobe

zero-day vulnerabilities used can be found at

Symantec


here

and at

Threatpost


here

.

Posted on 13 January 2012 by

Virus Bulletin