ESET is proud to announce that its WeLiveSecurity website is now available in French, marking ESET’s continued dedication to educating and safeguarding Canadians’ businesses and their personal data.

ESET’s Montreal office is on the forefront of cutting-edge research projects

ESET has been present in Montreal since 2009 and opened a fully-functioning Research & Development centre in April 2012, which focuses on situational awareness of malware and online threats, and helps promote better public understanding of cybersecurity in general. Among other notable research, in 2014 the Montreal team received the very first Péter Szőr Award for Best Technical Paper for its research on Operation Windigo.

Operation Windigo: One of the most complex attacks against Linux servers

ESET’s prize-winning research triggered a criminal investigation from the FBI, resulting in an arrest warrant for Russian hacker Maxim Senakh. Senakh was extradited from Finland to the United States, later pleading guiltyfor his participation in the Windigo criminal enterprise, which saw malware being installed on tens of thousands of computer servers throughout the world, generating millions of dollars in fraudulent payments. Senakh was sentenced in August to 46 months in prison.

Today, ESET has for the first time released the story of what happened during the four-year investigation.

Despite arrest after ESET’s technical analysis and FBI collaboration, Windigo is still very active

Although Senakh is now behind bars, the other conspirators responsible for Operation Windigo have adapted Ebury, their flagship backdoor component, to be stealthier than ever. ESET research has revealed new mechanisms were added to Ebury to better hide its presence on compromised servers, effectively evading most of the detection indicators previously available.

Today, ESET has published a new set of indicators, which will give the upper hand back to server administrators fighting against attacks coming from the Windigo operators.