New Malware Signed With Stolen Government Certificate 34
Trailrunner7 writes "Security researchers claim that malware spreading via malicious PDF files is signed with a valid certificate stolen from the Government of Malaysia, in just the latest evidence that scammers are using gaps in the security of digital certificates to help spread malicious code. The malware, identified by F-Secure as a Trojan horse program dubbed Agent.DTIW, was detected in a signed Adobe PDF file by the company's virus researchers recently. The malicious PDF was signed using a valid digital certificate for mardi.gov.my, the Agricultural Research and Development Institute of the Government of Malaysia. According to F-Secure, the Government of Malaysia confirmed that the certificate was legitimate and had been stolen 'quite some time ago.'"
Re:Why isn't this certificate revoked? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, yeah. Allowing the certificate to glimmering is obviously the better solution. There's no downside as long as no one uses the stolen certificate for evil purposes. And if they do, there's probably enough plausible deniability to buy time to do the revocation only when it's absolutely necessary, like buying fire insurance while the roof is burning.