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Authors of the last viruses are Russians

Date: June 29, 2004
Source: Computer Crime Research Center
By: Timofey Saytarly

The authors of the last malicious action to spread computer viruses exploiting earlier unknown flaw in the Internet browser are people of Archangelsk, Russia.

"Results of code analysis do not leave any doubts about determining of authors of this malicious virus spread. There is an "author line" in the code saying "Coded by HangUp Team". This suggests that authors and initiators of the action are HangUp team, an internationally known group of virusmakers and hackers," an announcement on the Kaspersky Labs website says.

According to Kaspersky Labs, who are the main developers of antivirus software in the Russian Federation, "HangUp Team was created by three residents of Archangelsk, Russia; who were arrested and sentenced to probation terms by article 273 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation for violating of "Creation and Spreading of Malicious Software Law" in 2000".

However, "at present HangUp Team anew carry on feverish activities and comprise of representatives of all post-Soviet computer underground and, probably, hackers from other countries. The group is also well-known due to its firm connections to spam industry, that, in turn, willingly purchases and uses computers hacked by HangUp".

Experts of Kaspersky Labs believe that the virus uses a so-called "Zero-day exploit", an unknown flaw. Later on hackers, having detected or bought out the flaw from the author, insensibly infected Internet servers all around the world to spread a spy program.
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Discussion is closed - view comments archieve
2006-03-26 15:15:52 - Hangup are not the best :) P.S. don't... Yo_Yo
2005-09-02 10:27:31 - Very nice blog. Gergana
2005-08-25 17:40:03 - Ding dong! What can you do eh? BobaKnob
2005-01-27 10:16:36 - As Kaspersky is well known to be founded... Patxi
2004-07-02 13:55:02 - Bastards. bring back the lash Trev
Total 5 comments
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