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AutoCAD Security Danger As Industrial Espionage Becomes More Common
Security researchers at ESET have uncovered a malware campaign targeting AutoCAD drawings in an apparent attempt at industrial espionage. The “military-grade” malware was first discovered in February 2012 and has been called ACAD/Medre.A. The worm attacks AutoCad, a popular software used by architects and engineers to draw up blue prints and other infrastructure plans. It targets computers running the Windows operating system to steal and e-mail out AutoCad “drawings.” These drawings are then received by an e-mail that ESET found is based in China. The catch with this piece of malware is that it’s not heavily attacking the United States, Europe, or China, but rather in Peru. It’s an odd location, which leads Bureau to believe the malware was probably written by people who wanted to see what their competition was up to. It could be an attempt to one-up a competing agency for a new business pitch, or other similar situations. There is a free stand-alone cleaner utility that has been made available that can be downloaded from here.
ACAD/Medre.A is a serious example of suspected industrial espionage. Every new design created by a victim is sent automatically to the authors of this malware. Needless to say this can cost the legitimate owner of the intellectual property a lot of money as the cybercriminals will have designs before they even go into production by the original designer. The attacker may even go so far as to get patents on the product before the inventor has registered it at the patent office. The inventor may not know of the security breach until his patent claim is denied due to prior art.
Posted by | Mon, Jul 02, 2012 - 02:06 PM
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