Malware Attack Targets U.S. Government Agencies [VIDEO] (Mashable)

[brightcove video="1389085133001" /] Sykipot, malware believed to originate in China, has been used to target smart cards in the Pentagon and other government agencies. According to security researcher AlienVault, a new variant of Sykipot is targeting the cards government employees use to access secure networks and servers.

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"The attackers use a spear phishing campaign to get their targets to open a PDF attachment which then deposits the Sykipot malware onto their machine (the attackers here took advantage of a zero-day exploit in Adobe)," according to AlienVault.

Check out the video above to learn more.

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Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, rubenhi

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/security/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20120113/tc_mashable/malware_attack_targets_us_government_agencies_video

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