Article Preview:
“Today, Cisco struck a blow to a group of hackers, disrupting a significant international revenue stream generated by the notorious Angler Exploit Kit. Angler is one of the largest exploit kit found on the market and has been making news as it has been linked to several high profile malvertising/ransomware campaigns. This is the most advanced and concerning exploit kit on the market – designed to bypass security devices and ultimately attack the largest number of devices possible.
In its research, Cisco determined that an inordinate number of proxy servers used by Angler were located on servers of service provider Limestone Networks with the primary threat actor responsible for up to 50 percent of Angler Exploit Kit activity, targeting up to 90,000 victims a day, and generating more than $30M annually. This implies that if you apply the full scope of Angler activity the revenue generated could exceed $60M annually. Talos gained additional visibility into the global activity of the network through their ongoing collaboration with Level 3 Threat Research Labs. Finally, thanks to our continued collaboration with OpenDNS we were able to gain in depth visibility into the domain activity associated with the adversaries.”