Monster haul of data reaped from job site

Trojan gathers 1.6 million sets of jobseeker records.

Researchers at

Symantec

have reported discovering a server carrying 1.6 million entries from the popular jobseeking website

Monster.com

, gathered by a trojan using stolen login information.

The trojan, dubbed ‘Infostealer.Monstres’ by

Symantec

, uses logins to

Monster

‘s sites for recruiters, which allow information on millions of members to be searched and, in this case, harvested in large numbers. The details include contact information such as email and postal addresses, phone numbers, and in many cases full resumes, providing potentially devastating fuel for identity theft and targeted phishing attacks.

The data is uploaded by the trojan to a remote server, on which the

Symantec

analysts found the cache of stolen data, thought to cover many hundreds of thousands of job candidates. The information may then be used to create targeted spear-phishing attacks, with fake job offers scattered with personal information about the recipient emailed out. Part of the conditions for the ‘job’ being advertised involve handing over bank account information.

The trojan used in the attack bears similarities to the ‘Gpcoder’ (aka ‘Sinowal’) ransomware attack

seen last month

, which was spammed out posing as a tool from

Monster.com

, often using highly targeted information on the recipient. Once installed, the trojan encrypted files found on infected systems, demanding money for decryption keys.

The data haul has been widely reported in the mainstream media, including the


BBC


. The original

Symantec

blog posting on the discovery is

here

, with analysis of the phishing spams using the stolen data

here

and details of the trojan itself

here

.

Posted on 22 August 2007 by

Virus Bulletin