Jumcar stands out from other malicious code developed in Latin America because of its particularly aggressive features. At the moment three generations of this malware family exist, which basically use symmetric algorithms in the first and second generation, and an asymmetric algorithm in the third. In this manner the configuration parameters are hidden, progressively increasing the complexity of the variants.

In the first generation, data is encrypted with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). We estimate that the first variant was released in March 2012, and that other pieces of malware with similar characteristics were being developed until August of the same year. That is to say over a six month period.

In this first stage, 75% of the phishing campaigns targeted Peruvian consumers that use home-banking services. The 25% remaining targeted users in Chile.

The following diagram shows multiple instances used by the second generation of Jumcar:

Some .NET instances used by a variant of the first generation of Jumcar

“Jumcar” is the name we have given to a family of malicious code developed in Latin America – particularly in Peru – and which, according to our research, has been deploying attack maneuvers since March 2012.

After six months of research we can now detail the specific features of Jumcar. We will communicate these over the following days. Essentially the main purpose of the malware is stealing financial information from Latin American users who use the home-banking services of major banking companies. Of these, 90% are channeled in Peru through phishing strategies based on cloning the websites of six banks.

Some variants of the Jumcar family also target two banks in Chile, and another in Costa Rica.

Percentage of the phishing attacks by countries

The 2014 FIFA World Cup has already kicked off, at least for Brazilian bad guys. Next year’s big event in Brazil has become one of the most prominent tactics used by Latin American cybercriminals as they unleash a real avalanche of phishing messages, fraudulent prizes and giveaways, malicious domains, fake tickets, credit card cloning, banking Trojans and a lot of social engineering.

Indeed Brazil figured among the top five countries where users risk being caught ‘offside’ by phishing attacks, according to a recent study conducted by RSA and released in January. The country is in fourth place, along with the UK, USA, Canada and South Africa. So it's no big surprise to find four Brazilian brands in the Top 10 most targeted on PhishTank stats.

Offers range from alleged cash prizes, trips and tickets to watch the games, while the attacks involve massive phishing mailings, and, to add spurious credibility, stars of the national soccer team have been ‘signed up’ by the conmen. Here’s one example featuring Neymar, the latest Brazilian hero to be dubbed the new Pelé:

"Win a new car, cash prizes and tickets for the World Cup, just click and subscribe now"

You’ve probably already heard about the 'Chupa Cabra', literally a "goat sucker". It’s a mythical beast rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. In recent times it has been allegedly spotted in Puerto Rico (where it was first reported), Mexico and the United States, especially in the latter’s Latin American communities. The name Chupa Cabra has also been adopted by Brazilian carders to name skimmer devices, installed on ATMs. They use this name because the Chupa Cabra will “suck” the information from the victim’s credit card.

The Brazilian media regularly shows videos of bad guys installing their Chupa Cabra onto an ATM. Some of them are unlucky, or incompetent, and get picked up on security cameras and caught by the cops.

That’s what makes installing an ATM skimmer a risky business – and that’s why Brazilian carders have joined forces with local coders to develop an easier, more secure way to steal and clone credit card information. From this unholy alliance, the ‘Chupa Cabra’ malware was born.

    How much do you earn per day? If we look at how much a cybercriminal from Brazil earns every day, we’ll understand why Brazil is one of the main sources of malware in the world.

Brazilian cybercriminals really like to use short URLs to track infections and have their own stats. Here is the profile of one criminal using Bitly as a URL shortening service.

Fabio Assolini talks about the explosion of banker Trojans in Brazil and explains why it is so difficult to fight back against cyber-crime in the Latin American region.

    This year cybercriminals haven’t been particularly active in exploiting the upcoming holiday season to snare victims with their scams. The first evidence of a growing trend of festive fraud only began to emerge about a week ago. Interestingly, this year’s attacks are somewhat different from previous years. This time round cybercriminals aren’t just going for hard cash – they are also looking for other assets that can be converted into money, such as air miles.

Several Eastern European banks have started notifying their customers in the beginning of last week that their cards have been blocked and will be replaced with new ones. Most of the banks did not give out any more details about what happened, and in many cases even failed to notify their customers prior to actually blocking their cards. Is it just another day in the payment processing business? Based on the rushed response from banks and the lack of information surrounding the case, I would say no.

It all started one week ago after the state-owned Romanian bank CEC Bank blocked ~17,000 cards in response to a security breach at one of VISA’s European payment processor.

The reaction of other banks followed soon. The Romanian branch of ING Bank also confirmed to have blocked compromised cards, but didn’t put out a number. They say they’ve only blocked a few cards, but are closely monitoring the situation.

A few days later, Serbian banks also started blocking thousands of cards for security reasons. Raiffeisen Bank, Komercijalna and Societe Generale confirm they have been informed by VISA about some of their customer’s cards being compromised. Very similar to what happened in Romania.

Rumors indicate the European branch of an electronic payment services provider, Euronet Worlwide, to be the source of this breach. This information has been going around Romanian business media (1, 2) – and though it hasn’t been confirmed officially, it would explain why customers from different banks in different countries were affected.

It’s very hard to assess the severity of this security breach, as the banks’ reaction to these events was very mixed. Some banks proceeded immediately to blocking and replacing all affected cads, while others decided to monitor the situation more closely.

Currently, it’s very hard to get a full picture of what is going on, but as it usually happens, these are unlikely to be isolated incidents. Actually, these stories could be just the tip of the iceberg. If you have recently received such a notification from your bank, we’d like to hear from you, especially if it’s outside Serbia and Romania.

Meanwhile, make sure to follow these 3 basic steps to make sure you don’t become a victim of credit card fraud:

1. Check your statements as often as possible. Make sure all payments showing up are actually made by yourself. In case you suspect a fraudulent transaction, get in touch with your bank as soon as possible.
2. Enable instant SMS notifications if your bank offers it. Some banks offer it for free, others charge for this option. No matter what, it’s worth it. You’ll be able to get instant reports of payments made with your cards.
3. Make sure you keep most of your money in an account that has no card linked to it. Having to move money from an account to another on a weekly or monthly basis might seem annoying, but it can save you a great deal of pain in case your card gets compromised.

Last, but not least, we know it’s the holiday season and shopping is on everyone’s mind. So if you want to keep your money safe when doing online shopping, this insightful article we’ve put together is for you: Online shopping made safe and convenient.

    While looking over some potentially malicious links from Brazil, I came across an interesting group of files. They were of varying sizes but had similar structures.
 

Dark Market was one of the most famous underground forums ever, for several reasons. The most important one was that one of the administrators was an infiltrated FBI agent running a covert operation that ultimately lead to the arrest of 60 people worldwide. The forum was shut down in 2008, when Dark Market was probably the most important carding forum in the world.