Are you Folding@thome? You better hope not!

[The1Dickens]

With the sudden onset of COVID-19, and enthusiasts desire to help using the popular distributed computing platform 'folding@home', some have seen this as a disgusting opportunity possibly on par with the people buying mass supplies of resources and then reselling them with 400%+ markup.

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With the rise in popularity of Folding@home, security researchers at ProofPoint have discovered a new phishing campaign that pretends to be from a company developing a cure for Coronavirus.

These emails have a subject of "Please help us with Fighting corona-virus" and state that they want you to help "speed up our process of finding the cure" by downloading and installing the Folding@home client.

 

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"RedLine Stealer is new malware available for sale on Russian underground forums with several pricing options: $150 lite version; $200 pro version; $100 / month subscription option. It steals information from browsers such as login, autocomplete, passwords, and credit cards. It also collects information about the user and their system such as the username, their location, hardware configuration, and installed security software. A recent update to RedLine Stealer also added the ability to steal cryptocurrency cold wallets," ProofPoint states in their report.

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This malware can steal saved login credentials, credit cards, cookies, and autocomplete fields from browsers. It can also collect data from FTP and IM clients, steal files, download files, execute commands, and send information back about the computer.

While I tend to think that anyone who would be interested in, or a part of, a distributed computing service is on the more tech-savvy side, I know it would be possible that someone 'heard about it in passing, and didn't know too much about it, but it sounded like a good thing' and see this email and then download the malware. One small giveaway, if your keen eyes noticed in the title, is the way they spell 'folding@thome' instead of 'folding@home'.

 

The article finishes with this, however:
 

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It should also be noted that Folding@home is a terrific project and just because people are performing scams in their name, does not mean it should be avoided.

Just be sure to download the Folding@home client only from the legitimate site.

 

 

The article:

BleepingComputer

The Report (also linked in the article):

ProofPoint

 

And if you are interested in getting started Folding@Home, LTT has a section dedicated to it, as well as an upcoming event. Sign up today!

[Spotty]

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With the rise in popularity of Folding@home, security researchers at ProofPoint have discovered a new phishing campaign that pretends to be from a company developing a cure for Coronavirus.

These emails have a subject of "Please help us with Fighting corona-virus" and state that they want you to help "speed up our process of finding the cure" by downloading and installing the Folding@home client.

 

Embedded in the phishing email is a "Download now" button that when clicked will download a file called foldingathomeapp.exe, which is the Redline information-stealing Trojan.

Wow. What assholes.

[Letgomyleghoe]

And this kids is why you don’t open phishy emails.

[Oalei]

well sooner or later this will happens anyway....

[givingtnt]

 

 

Asshole

[FakeCIA]

I hate this planet.

[vorticalbox]

On 3/20/2020 at 1:30 AM, scuff gang said:

And this kids is why you don’t open phishy emails.

Or any emails in my case because work can slack me

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

it's so strange that all the evolution of our species that have taken place which has led us to this point, the first thing we as humans we think at any turn is to immediately think how can it be abused in order to fix it. like you see a cliff, the first thing you think is to imagine what'd happen if we fell. it's just so strange. 

[Gegger]

mggffhgfghfhhgm society

 

why why and why

[PineyCreek]

6 minutes ago, Gegger said:

mggffhgfghfhhgm society

 

why why and why

No matter the circumstance, ideology, race, color, creed, or level of suffering or prosperity, there are always assholes.  That's why.

[captain_to_fire]

By the time it was reported, I hope majority of antivirus vendors already detected and blocked it. 

[Guest willies leg]

While Apple, Facebook, Google, etc. all stand by idle, IBM does this:

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/nordic-msp/ibm-supercomputer-summit-attacks-coronavirus/

 

Heck, Google couldn't even build a website. I guess building a website is really hard.

So frustrated that they're focused on spreading misinformation and confusion to help drive clicks and revenue and views.

[Inkz]

That's so scummy of them to do that.

[Tristerin]

Now would be the time for hack teams to quarantine themselves and find out who did this.  

[RollinLower]

22 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Now would be the time for hack teams to quarantine themselves and find out who did this.  

probably one of those hack teams tbh

[Tristerin]

1 minute ago, RollinLower said:

probably one of those hack teams tbh

Maybe, the Legion is vast. 

[Guest]

On 3/21/2020 at 8:39 PM, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

it's so strange that all the evolution of our species that have taken place which has led us to this point, the first thing we as humans we think at any turn is to immediately think how can it be abused in order to fix it. like you see a cliff, the first thing you think is to imagine what'd happen if we fell. it's just so strange. 

Most species evolve in a way to make the individual stronger, the selfish gene so to speak. You find it is mainly the insect world that buck this trend. So these people are beneath insects.