Botnet C&c Server Hosted On Google Groups

[Peaches]

Botnet C&C Server Hosted on Google Groups in order to thwart traffic filtering mechanisms

"Malware researchers have discovered a computer trojan, which uses a private Google Groups newsgroup to receive updates and instructions from its authors. This threat suggests that cybercrooks are taking legit Web 2.0 services into consideration for C&C implementation.

Last month, security researchers from Arbor Networks announced the discovery of a Brazilian banking trojan, which was receiving commands via a Twitter account and various pastebin services. Inspired by this finding, Vaclav Vincalek, president of Pacific Coast Information Systems, theorized that in the future, Google's own search engine could be abused in a similar fashion.

Maybe Mr. Vincalek's approach is still purely theoretical, but using other Google services for this purpose is not, as malware analysts from Symantec just discovered. "A back door Trojan that we are calling Trojan.Grups has been using the Google Groups newsgroups to distribute commands," they announce."

full story at softpedia - http://news.softpedia.com/news/Botnet-C-C-...ps-121576.shtml