7-Year Old Malware Finally Discovered

Kaspersky Labs has recently published a report about a malware called The Mask (rough English translation of Careto meaning “ugly face” in Spanish) which reportedly has been in circulation for the past seven years. According to Kaspersky, the malware targets high-level institutions including government offices, embassies and large energy corporations…

 

Kaspersky Labs has recently published a report about a malware called The Mask (rough English translation of Careto meaning “ugly face” in Spanish) which reportedly has been in circulation for the past seven years.

According to Kaspersky, the malware targets high-level institutions including government offices, embassies and large energy corporations. It has reportedly claimed over 300 unique victims in 31 countries including the United States, UK, China, France and Germany.

The malware is cleverly coded and comes equipped with sophisticated set of tools including a rootkit and a bootkit. It also has a wide reach with versions that can affect almost every operating system in the market including Mac OS X, Linux, both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows, and possibly mobile OS like Android and iOS.

The Mask infects systems as a spear phishing email that entices users to a malicious website disguised as a news site (such as The Guardian and the Washington Post). Once inside the system, the malware can hijack all communication channels on a device including Skype conversations and even sensitive encryption keys.

Kaspersky said that the malware was likely developed by a nation-state (probably a Spanish speaking one as seen in the use of Spanish words in the code).

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