Brazilian govt sites found serving malware

Cyber crooks targeting Brazilian users have a well-documented predilection for banking Trojans, but every now and then they opt for other types of malware.

Trend Micro researchers have recently discovered that two Brazilian government websites have been compromised and have been serving a number of malware variants to visitors since late last week.

Masquerading as “Adobe” and Flash Player updates and upgrades, the malicious executables usually drops another executable and a Java file posing as a .GIF file.

While the first lowers the system’s security settings, the second one downloads and executes additional files, and among them is a .JAR file that creates a new administrator account through which multiple concurrent remote desktop sessions in the affected computer are enabled, giving remote attackers complete control over the computer.

What is the ultimate goal of this attack is unknown, and it could theoretically be anything.

The researchers haven’t mentioned which particular government sites were compromised, but this could be a watering hole campaign aimed to compromise computers belonging to government workers, or it could be a simple information-stealing campaign aimed at random users.