CBC: SYNful Knock cyberspying malware takes over Cisco routers

A cyberspying malware has hit multiple industries and government agencies through attacks to Cisco routers. Article by Thomson Reuters on CBC Security researchers say they have uncovered clandestine attacks across three continents on the routers that direct traffic around the internet, potentially allowing suspected cyberspies to harvest vast amounts of data while going undetected.  

In the attacks, a highly sophisticated form of malicious software, dubbed SYNful Knock, has been implanted in routers made by Cisco, the world's top supplier, U.S. security research firm FireEye said on Tuesday.

Routers are attractive to hackers because they operate outside the perimeter of firewalls, anti-virus, behavioural detection software and other security tools that organisations use to safeguard data traffic. Until now, they were considered vulnerable to sustained denial-of-service attacks using barrages of millions of packets of data, but not outright takeover.

"If you own (seize control of) the router, you own the data of all the companies and government organizations that sit behind that router," FireEye chief executive Dave DeWalt told Reuters of his company's discovery.

- Read more at CBC