India among major victims of ‘Red October’

January 18, 2013

What is RED OCTOBER ?

‘Red October’ (or ‘Rocra’ for short) = A Cyber spying campaign (a cyber-espionage network) launched in 2007 by unidentified criminals that have been secretly stealing important data from many computer systems used by government agencies, military, nuclear, gas and oil industries, aerospace, private companies, etc. in many countries since 2007.

The cyber-espionage network has been uncovered by experts at Russia’s Kaspersky Lab. As per Kaspersky Lab, Russia’s multinational computer security company, the ‘Red October’ malware called Backdoor.Win32.Sputnik, has been stealing confidential data.

It has infected hundreds of victims around the world in 8 main categories:

Government
Diplomatic / embassies
Research institutions
Trade and commerce
Nuclear / energy research
Oil and gas companies
Aerospace
Military

The majority of infections are actually from the embassies of ex-USSR country members. India is one of the main victims of ‘Red October’ cyber espionage attack along with Russia which is the worst hit and many other countries like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Belgium and the United States. Russia tops the list of countries with 38 detected infections, India ranks fifth with 14 infections. The United States is also on the list with 6 attacks. The Kaspersky Lab is continuing its investigation in collaboration with international law enforcement agencies and national Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERT).

Based on our Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) a list of countries with most infections (only for those with more than 5 victims):

Country-Infections
RUSSIAN FEDERATION-35
KAZAKHSTAN-21
AZERBAIJAN-15
BELGIUM-15
INDIA-14
AFGHANISTAN-10
ARMENIA 10
IRAN; ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF TURKMENISTAN-7
UKRAINE-6
UNITED STATES-6
VIETNAM-6