"The Mask" Espionage Malware | Hacker News Reader

"The Mask" Espionage Malware

schneier.com

81 pointsbikeshack11 comments

> The primary targets are government institutions, diplomatic offices and embassies, energy, oil and gas companies, research organizations and activists.

Ah pesky activists.

Intelligence agencies: support domestic economic advantage, suppress domestic political dissent, and defend against nation security threats. That seems to be order of priorities based on all these leaks.

Infecting more machines (to obscure the targets of interest) is a trade-off of course, and is not necessarily valid in the general case. The more machines you infect, the more chances of being discovered.

L'Homme aux Cercles Bleus by Fred Vargas

http://spoil-films-livres.over-blog.com/article-l-homme-aux-...

If you use Chrome you can click a button at the top to translate it. To read the spoiler text, just select the blue boxes to make them readable.

any more info? is it on windows? macs, both? can I check my machine?

Trojan.Win32/Win64.Careto.* and Trojan.OSX.Careto

http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2014/Kaspersky-Lab...

http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208216078/The_Careto_Mask_...

That securelist.com link is seriously slow so http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5gWQNie...

If you click on the first link in the article, you end up at Kaspersky's article which states, in the first paragraph:

> This includes an extremely sophisticated malware, a rootkit, a bootkit, Mac OS X and Linux versions and possibly versions for Android and iOS (iPad/iPhone).

Malware called The Mask? Infecting computers in Spanish-speaking countries?

Must... not... make... luchador joke...

I was thinking of Zorro!

Was it from Spain, or was it a frame? You decide.

Mask means worm in Swedish. Just saying...

Translating the Spanish word "Careto" into English and then use the English word as if it were Swedish seems kinda silly...

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