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Crimeware

Crimeware is a class of malware designed specifically to automate cybercrime.^[1]

Crimeware (as distinct from spyware and adware) is designed to perpetrate identity theft through social engineering or technical stealth in order to access a computer user's financial and retail accounts for the purpose of taking funds from those accounts or completing unauthorized transactions on behalf of the cyberthief.^{[citation needed]} Alternatively, crimeware may steal confidential or sensitive corporate information. Crimeware represents a growing problem in network security as many malicious code threats seek to pilfer valuable, confidential information.

The cybercrime landscape has shifted from individuals developing their own tools to a market where crimeware, tools and services for illegal online activities, can be easily acquired in online marketplaces. These crimeware markets are expected to expand, especially targeting mobile devices.^[2]

The term crimeware was coined by David Jevans in February 2005 in an Anti-Phishing Working Group response to the FDIC article "Putting an End to Account-Hijacking Identity Theft".^[3]

Criminals use a variety of techniques to steal confidential data through crimeware, including through the following methods:

• Surreptitiously install keystroke loggers to collect sensitive data—login and password information for online bank accounts, for example—and report them back to the thief.^[4]
• Redirect a user's web browser to a counterfeit website controlled by the thief even when the user types the website's proper domain name in the address bar, also known as pharming.^[5]
• Steal passwords cached on a user's system.^[6]
• Hijack a user session at a financial institution and drain the account without the user's knowledge.
• Enable remote access into applications, allowing criminals to break into networks for malicious purposes.
• Encrypt all data on a computer and require the user to pay a ransom to decrypt it (ransomware).

Crimeware threats can be installed on victims' computers through multiple delivery vectors, including:

• Vulnerabilities in Web applications. The Bankash.G Trojan, for example, exploited an Internet Explorer vulnerability to steal passwords and monitor user input on webmail and online commerce sites.^[6]
• Targeted attacks sent via SMTP. These social-engineered threats often arrive disguised as a valid e-mail message and include specific company information and sender addresses. The malicious e-mails use social engineering to manipulate users to open the attachment and execute the payload.^[7]
• Remote exploits that exploit vulnerabilities on servers and clients^[8]

Crimeware can have a significant economic impact due to loss of sensitive and proprietary information and associated financial losses. One survey estimates that in 2005 organizations lost in excess of $30 million due to the theft of proprietary information.^[9] The theft of financial or confidential information from corporate networks often places the organizations in violation of government and industry-imposed regulatory requirements that attempt to ensure that financial, personal and confidential.

US laws and regulations include:

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
• Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
• California Senate Bill 1386 (2002)
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

• Malware
• Metasploit Project
• MPack (software), A PHP-based crimeware
• Targeted attacks
• Tiny Banker Trojan, A small banking trojan
• Phishing
• Spyware
• Zeus (malware), Perhaps the best known banking trojan

• Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Archived 2006-11-15 at the Wayback Machine
• Computer Security Institute (Archived: August 8, 2002, at 22:18:34)
• "Real-Time Hackers Foil Two-Factor Security" (Technology Review, September 18, 2009)
• "Cyber Crooks Target Public & Private Schools", (Washington Post, September 14, 2009)
• "Crimeware gets worse - How to avoid being robbed by your PC", (Computerworld, September 26, 2009)