'Red October' malware: what you need to know

What it is, what it does, and how you can stop it

Kaspersky Lab this week announced that it had found what it described as a shadowy group of hackers who had been harvesting date from various diplomatic, government, and scientific research computer networks. According to the Kaspersky Lab report, the Red October hackers have been specifically targeting high-ranking individuals in public sector roles in so-called 'spear phishing' attacks (targeted phishing). Here's everything you need to know about Red October. Visit Security Advisor.


According to Kaspersky, for five years Red October has been tempting its targets into letting it exploit a number of relatively minor security vulnerabilities in programs such as Microsoft's Excel and Word, as well as poisoned PDFs and Java exploits. The malware then infects PCs, smartphones, and networking kit. See all Security reviews.

According to the Kaspersky report Red October uses at least three exploits created in China. The group behind the attack, however, is Russian - or at least Russian speaking. Given that some of the targets were high-ranking US officials, this led to some speculation about it being politically motivated intelligence gathering. Some reports even suggested that Red October was government-sponsored spying. See also: Kaspersky Lab's "Red October" cyber-espionage saga leaves lots of questions unanswered.

more here: CWZ