A slightly on-the-nose depiction of malware. Photo: ullstein bild / Getty
Researchers at Recorded Future profiled the only two large sellers of fraudulently acquired “software certificates” in a new report. With prices as low as $299, the illicit certificates can evade some digital defenses on the cheap.
Why it matters: Software certificates are essentially a high-tech way for computers to ask a trusted third party, “hey, have you ever heard of this program?” If that system breaks down, unsuspecting users may end up installing malware without any warning.
- The details: For between $299 (for a low-end certificate from the antivirus firm Comodo, allowing a program to start building a reputation for not being malicious) and $1,599 (for a certificate from Symantec that already has passed those filters) a criminal can purchase certificates through one of the vendors.
- The nitty-gritty: The vendors both appear to be selling primarily to a Eastern European market through hacker forums.
- Does it work? It sure seems to. The report found that malware that was caught by eight mostly high-end antivirus programs was only caught by two antivirus programs after adding the fraudulent certificate.
- “It can effectively be used to obfuscate malware from any antivirus program,” Andrei Barysevich, the researcher behind the report, told Axios.
- Only two? Recorded Future is a threat intelligence firm that operates like a search engine for the darkest corners of the internet that search engines are unable to access. Their search and consultation with experts only turned up the two major vendors of fake certificates.