Cybercriminals : They ’re just like us ! At least , their choice of swarm store is n’t so far off from your fair non - despicable data thief . alternatively of using dedicated servers to hoard slip data , hacker have taken tousing popular consumer productslike Google Drive and Dropbox .
“ What it come up down to is , the outlaw are using the same business logical system that is drive hoi polloi to move more and more operation to the swarm for lawful business , ” Christopher Budd , the spheric manager of terror communications for cloud certificate firm Trend Micro , told me . After all , why shell out for consecrated crime host when you may just use the barren , commodious storage options like Google Drive and Dropbox offering ? There is no intellect , hence the uptick .
Trend Microrecently uncovered a schemewhere hoi polloi installed malware to siphon PDFs , DOCs , and other text file filing cabinet from computers and documents out and onto Google Drive . This number after a similar malware that enable crook to store stolen files on Dropbox was uncovered .
For Google Drive storage , the malware embeds a refresh token , which Google requires as part of its OAuth 2.0 protocol . The malware also uses Google ’s programing language , golang .
It ’s of import to take note , plainly , that Google itself is not compromised . This is not Google ’s fault , and until Google comes up with a way to notice stolen files on Drive , it wo n’t have a way to block up it .
“ There ’s nothing particular about Google Drive here . At some point , it ’s going to be Microsoft ’s OneDrive , ” Budd say . “ We ’ve already experience Dropbox . We ’ve project Evernote . All of these free swarm - base services are executable candidates . ”
I ’ve asked Trend Micro precisely how many people they believe are dissemble or at risk from these attacks , and I ’ll update when I hear back . It might be a very little group , so there ’s no demand to freak out . I ’ve also asked Google how it is reply to the incident and whether it has any advice to help the great unwashed protect themselves .
Budd believes the cardinal way to keep files from getting stolen in this fashion is to keep your software updated . [ Trend Micro ]
DROPBOXGoogle Drive
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