Russia has presented us with quite possibly the most advanced social engineering scheme yet. If you are chatting with a Russian, you should beware, because the one you're having a conversation with may be a bot called CyberLover whose authors have easy money on their minds.
"As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering," PC Tools senior malware analyst Sergei Shevchenko said in a statement.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the dangers of making personal information available online in the context of identity theft and personalized phishing attacks. This, however, takes the whole thing to a different level - users are more likely to provide personal (possibly trivial) information to someone of human nature rather than a website.
CyberLover even has a few different personalities, such as that of a romantic lover and a sexual predator, making it more difficult to tell from a human being.
The potential is enormous and quite troubling. The bot could, for example, in the middle of a romantic conversation link to something that appears to be his homepage, or something else, and install malicious software in the process.
Even though CyberLover is still just a Russian thing, it probably won't be long until "he" makes "his" appearance on a more global scale.
"As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering," PC Tools senior malware analyst Sergei Shevchenko said in a statement.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the dangers of making personal information available online in the context of identity theft and personalized phishing attacks. This, however, takes the whole thing to a different level - users are more likely to provide personal (possibly trivial) information to someone of human nature rather than a website.
CyberLover even has a few different personalities, such as that of a romantic lover and a sexual predator, making it more difficult to tell from a human being.
The potential is enormous and quite troubling. The bot could, for example, in the middle of a romantic conversation link to something that appears to be his homepage, or something else, and install malicious software in the process.
Even though CyberLover is still just a Russian thing, it probably won't be long until "he" makes "his" appearance on a more global scale.
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