THREE ANTIVIRUS COMPANIES WERE HACKED AND THEIR SOURCE COLD WAS SOLD

ORIGINAL CONTENT: https://www.securitynewspaper.com/2019/05/09/three-antivirus-companies-were-hacked-and-their-source-cold-was-sold/

A report recently released by an information security services firm claims that a group of hackers have released information exposed by a data breach against three of the major U.S. antivirus software companies.

This group of hackers, self-named “Fxmsp”, aims to sell source code owned by companies, in addition to the keys to access their corporate networks for about $300k USD. In addition, hackers have revealed samples of information that seems to confirm the veracity of the attacks.

According to the reports, the information security services firm notified the alleged victims of their investigation, in addition to providing some details to the police. The hacker group would have begun to offer this confidential information using private communication channels, such as dark web hacking forums or Telegram chats.

Fxmsp is a group of hackers well known among the community of cyber crime, as its main activity is the sale of information stolen in data breaches, primarily attacking global companies and critical government organizations’ infrastructure; the data breach in the multinational hotel chain Marriott has been linked to the activities of this criminal group.

Last March, the group said it was able to sell exclusive information stolen from the main antivirus companies in the United States, mention the specialists from the information security services firm.  “Today, almost two months after this statement, we confirm that this group has an exclusive source code related to the software development of antivirus companies”.

According to the specialists of the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) hackers managed to steal the source code that included the code for antivirus software, analytic code based on automatic learning and some security plugins for use in browsers.

“Fxmsp has stated that its hacking capabilities improve continuously, increasing the possibility that they can access information stored in secure systems”, the specialists added.