Clever Malware Hidden For Five Years: 'Project Sauron'

'Project Sauron' Malware Hidden for Five Years

A sophisticated form of malware known as Project Sauron went undetected for five years at a string of organisations, according to security researchers.

Chrsi Baraniuk | August 9, 2016

The malware may have been designed by a state-sponsored group.
It can disguise itself as benign files and does not operate in predictable ways, making it harder to detect.
Experts from Kaspersky Lab and Symantec said it allows the attacker to spy on infected computers.
In September last year, Kaspersky first detected the malware on an unspecified "government organisation" network.
Since then, the firm claims to have found evidence of Project Sauron at more than 30 organisations in Russia, Iran and Rwanda.
These were generally government, scientific, military, telecoms and financial organisations, according to Kaspersky.

"Project Sauron may have been created by a state-sponsored hacker group, researchers believe." Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37021957?ocid=global_bbccom_email_09082016_technology

[Click to Enlarge] "Kaspersky researchers have documented 500 infections by Equation Group in at least 42 countries, with Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Syria, and Mali topping the list. Because of a self-destruct mechanism built into the malware, the researchers suspect that this is just a tiny percentage of the total; the actual number of victims likely reaches into the tens of thousands." Source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

<more at http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37021957?ocid=global_bbccom_email_09082016_technology; related articles and links: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/researchers-crack-open-unusually-advanced-malware-that-hid-for-5-years/ (Researchers crack open unusually advanced malware that hid for 5 years. Espionage platform with more than 50 modules was almost certainly state sponsored. August 8, 2016) and http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/ (How “omnipotent” hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years—and were found at last. "Equation Group" ran the most advanced hacking operation ever uncovered. February 16, 2015)>