You might be astonished nowadays by a barrage of security threats being targeted in every possible way. Cryptocurrency, power houses, banks and everywhere else, the hacking attempts have been made more and more sophisticated. A widespread and common example of this sophistication is the WannaCry malware attack earlier this year. According to NBC news:
“Hospitals, schools, companies and governments around the world were assessing the damage Saturday after a massive cyberattack hit almost 100 countries, infecting computers with malware that demanded ransom payments.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the worldwide attack, which some experts believe was inspired by a National Security Agency tool kit that was leaked last year.
Antivirus provider Avast reported that some 100,000 computers had been infected by the crippling malware and that the “WanaCrypt0r 2.0,” as it is called, ransomware had been detected in 99 countries with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets.”
Now in this scenario, what would be worse than knowing that passwords of the common users too aren’t safe anymore? Passwords of computers, emails or bank accounts, all are now on stake with the introduction of cheap password stealing malwares.
The malware known as Ovidiy Stealer has been made by developers in Russia. It may not be the most sophisticated software but it is capable of rendering enough harm to users by harming the integrity of their passwords. The most shocking thing about this malware is that it is available at a price of as low as $7 to $13. A heaven for cybercriminals indeed, this software is not capable of breaching through deep security layers but it’s able to harm the user credentials from famous web browsers like Google Chrome and Opera.
This software doesn’t support other browsers but with the maximum number of users on Chrome i.e. according to official reports at 2 billion+, it is enough to harm almost ¼ of total world population. After a research by Proofpoint, the security researchers believe that this software is being distributed along with an ingeniously designed dashboard through email attachments and game cheats. The dashboard allows the cybercriminals to keep record of their harmed devices, their stolen credentials and amazingly, have contact to the developers of this cheap password stealing malware to ask for any support in using this software.
Security researchers believe that this cheap password stealing malware has the potential to cause huge havocs in the near future in the field of computer security. Therefore, it is advised to everyone to use two step verification process for all accounts in order to make accounts safer. Moreover, updating virus and malware databases on antimalware and antivirus softwares is crucial.
