'Strider' targets Europe, Asia; Telstra's 5G tests; ACCC to study comms market

Security vendor Symantec has provided details on a group that the vendor says has been conducting attacks against targets in Europe and Asia.

“A previously unknown group called Strider has been conducting cyberespionage-style attacks against selected targets in Russia, China, Sweden, and Belgium,” a blog post from Symantec read.

According to Symantec, Strider uses an advanced piece of malware called ‘RemSec’, which the security vendor described as a “stealthy tool” that is “primarily designed to spy on targets”.

“Remsec […] opens a back door on an infected computer, can log keystrokes, and steal files,” the blog post said.

The security vendor said the group has been active since at least October 2011, and that its targets have mainly been organisations and individuals that would be of interest to a nation state’s intelligence services.

“Symantec has found evidence of infections in 36 computers across seven separate organizations. The group’s targets include a number of organizations and individuals located in Russia, an airline in China, an organization in Sweden, and an embassy in Belgium,” the blog post said.

“Strider is capable of creating custom malware tools and has operated below the radar for at least five years. Based on the espionage capabilities of its malware and the nature of its known targets, it is possible that the group is a nation-state level attacker.”

More information is available at the blog post.

Communications sector market study

The ACCC has initiated a market study of Australia’s communications sector. The study will scrutinise current and emerging competition and consumer issues in the sector.

The commission’s chairman, Rod Sims, announced the market study at the ACCC/AER Regulatory Conference dinner last week.

The study will involve consultation with both the industry and consumers.

Sims said: “We recognise the communications sector is one that all Australians have an interest in, and one that facilitates economic growth. Importantly, the study will also allow the ACCC to consider a wide range of interrelated issues that have been raised by the sector and that go to the proper functioning of the market.”

The market study will consider how a variety of factors affect competition, the efficient operation of markets, and investment incentives. Some of the factors to be considered include:

• the changing structure of communications markets;
• the increasing availability of OTT (over the top) services like social network platforms, and communications and marketplace apps;
• the growth in demand for bandwidth and data in recent years;
• the increasing preference for mobile as a way to access the internet.

The ACCC said the market study will examine options to address any issues that are identified, and that the study “will also consider the potential to improve economic regulation where warranted”.

The commission is expecting to release an issues paper on the topic towards the end of August 2016.

For more information on the market study, visit this link or send an email to commsmarketstudy@accc.gov.au.

Telstra 5G test

Telstra is planning to test Ericsson’s 5G radio test bed in a demonstration in September that will examine 5G capabilities in a real-world environment.

Mike Wright, group managing director of Networks in Telstra Operations, offered some details of the planned demonstration in a blog post on his company’s Exchange website.

The demonstration will test the speed and latency of the technology, as well as multi-user MIMO.

“The demonstration will also test beam steering technology, where the beam steering antenna array tracks your location and directs a mobile signal straight to your device rather than sending it out in all directions or to a particular sector as it does today,” Wright wrote.

“The advantage of beam steering is that the mobile signal to each user is optimised with less interference resulting in better network performance and more capacity.”

The Telstra executive said the demonstration will help his company fulfil its goal of rolling out a full-scale 5G service on its mobile network in Australia.

Image courtesy of greyweed under CC