The New Botnet, Called Jaku, Only Targets Scientists, Engineers, And Academics

The Botnet Jaku, named after a planet in Star Wars saga, looks very peculiar about its targets. It is different from other botnets because its victims’ list comprises of specific people like mostly the individuals who are working for some International Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), engineering companies, academics, scientists, and government employees.

This investigation was announced by ForcePoint Security Labs which spent a rigorous six months of deep inspections. And finally, it was concluded that it only targets specific people as mentioned above.

According to the report, the victims are spread all over the globe, but a large proportion of the victims are from South Korea and Japan.

Out of the 19,000 unique victims, a major 42 percent of the victims are from South Korea, 31 percent from Japan, nice percent from China, six percent from the US and the rest are from the rest of the world. It should be noted that South Korea and Japan are both the neighbours of North Korea.

According to ForcePoint Security Labs, this botnet works on a multi-stage tracking and it takes the data from the targeted victims.

As far as getting infected by this botnet malware is concerned, it infects the targeted system using malware which can be easily downloaded from a number of different sources. The major sources include poisoned torrents of pirated anime films and fake PNG image files.

Once these files or software are downloaded and installed on the system, they start sending messages to a command and control system. It enables the hackers to control the remote system and get the precious data. You can read the full report by ForcePoint on Jaku here.