A key trend in today\u2019s world of cybercriminal business is the legalization of cybercrime, which is positioned differently in the infosec market. For instance, selling zero day vulnerabilities<\/a> (i.e. vulnerabilities with no security solutions put in place) is becoming increasingly prominent.<\/p>\n Now anyone (those that can afford certain vulnerabilities that can have more than five zeros on the price tag) can purchase an exploit and use it when appropriate\u2014ideally, when protecting their assets, but practically, for almost anything. The trading of such vulnerabilities can be compared to the missile or sophisticated explosives trade.<\/p>\n Furthermore, some companies offer full-feature software bundles that can infiltrate networks and, after obtaining control of the victim\u2019s PC, monitor their activities. We have talked about the highest-end spying Trojan \u2013 well, this case can be compared to selling fully packed VFs.<\/p>\n The Banner of FinFisher advertises their perfectly legal means of intrusion and remote monitoring.<\/p><\/div>\n Companies offering such services range from the largest defense industry conglomerates reporting to governments, to modestly sized independent companies.<\/p>\n \u00a0The latter would not, of course, sell malware to anyone, but their customer list is much more diverse: beyond secret service organizations, it includes major corporations. The services of such \u2018mercenaries\u2019 are actively purchased by third-world governments like Pakistan and Nigeria.<\/p>\n Galileo is powered by Hacking Team- another legal developer for cyber espionage<\/p><\/div>\n Also, it is important to note that the actual buyer of cyber-espionage services is not necessarily the formal one: there was a case in which surveillance and filtering solutions were sold to the UAE but ended up in embargoed Syria.<\/p>\n One way or another, Kaspersky Lab\u2019s experience proves that privately developed legal malware could potentially end up not only in the \u2018good\u2019 hands of secret service (how good they actually are is not the main topic of this article), but also in the hands of very pragmatic third parties. In other words, even if you\u2019re are not at all relevant to the criminal world or the political realm, and are just an ordinary person, one of these days you could find yourself in the midst of it all.<\/p>\n How dangerous is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Significantly. Malware like this is created for those with a very generous budget. It is at a very advanced level that has nothing to do with teenage misbehaviors or petty criminals trying to steal a hundred bucks from your credit card.<\/p>\n Some insights from the developers of such malware that slipped on Wikileaks, state that a traditional antivirus does not pose even the tiniest threat to their products.<\/p>\n The developers of legal malware use a great deal of advanced technologies in their products that can fool a virus analyst and prevent him from looking under the hood.<\/p>\n What can be done about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Practices do prove that such technologies do have their limitations: There is no magic allowing one to break stealthily into any system but, rather, it is a sample of an usual malware.<\/p>\n Consequently, that means heuristic algorithms (a method of detection based on searching for suspicious attributes relevant to malware) employed in Kaspersky Lab\u2019s solutions are very likely able to filtrate the workings of cyber-mercenaries.<\/p>\n Kaspersky heuristics are able to successfully catch creative mercenaries<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n For example, our research of products by FinFisher<\/a> (one of the most prominent players in the legal cyber-weapon market) proved that contrary to FinFisher\u2019s statement, heuristic analyzers that are deployed in our products as of Kaspersky Antivirus 6 (MP4), have successfully dealt with such threats.<\/p>\n![\"FinFisher-1\"](\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/102\/2014\/10\/06042425\/FinFisher-1.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"hacking-team-123\"](\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/102\/2014\/10\/06042423\/hacking-team-123-176x300.png\")