KashmirBlack Botnet

KashmirBlack is the name of a massive botnet operation that was uncovered by cybersecurity experts only recently. There is little information about these attacks' possible perpetrators, but experts believe that members of PhantomGhost, an Indonesian defacement group, might be affiliated with the KashmirBlack Botnet. The massive operation relies on reliable Web services to orchestrate the attacks heavily, as well as to help the attackers manage the botnet. Furthermore, the criminals switch service providers to stay a step ahead of malware researchers frequently. For example, the KashmirBlack Botnet was using special GitHub repositories up until a few months ago when they migrated their operation to the Dropbox cloud service provider suddenly.

The primary targets of the KashmirBlack Botnet are vulnerable Content Management Systems (CMS) – the group relies on old exploits to gain administrative permissions on the compromised website. Once they do this, they may be able to try to penetrate the security of other websites and services hosted on the same server. This has allowed the KashmirBlack Botnet to expand to hundreds of thousands of active devices.

The group behind the KashmirBlack Botnet seems to be very versatile when it comes to the activities they perform. The botnet has been spotted being involved in defacements, spam emails and cryptocurrency mining. Surprisingly, the KashmirBlack Botnet's powers have not been harvested for Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks yet.

Researchers believe that the rapid growth of the KashmirBlack Botnet over the past months may be related to the Coronavirus pandemic and the fact that many businesses are trying to gain an online presence. Many of these businesses are saving funds by using free CMS services, which end up being vulnerable to various types of attacks.

Protecting your website from the KashmirBlack Botnet requires you to use a reliable and secure CMS service, as well as make sure that you apply all security patches and updates to software and Web services.