Fraudulent gambling network may actually be something more nefarious

A sprawling infrastructure that has been bilking unsuspecting people through fraudulent gambling websites for 14 years is likely a dual operation run by a nation-state-sponsored group that is targeting government and private-industry organizations in the US and Europe, researchers said Wednesday. Researchers have previously tracked smaller pieces of the enormous infrastructure. Last month, security firm Sucuri reported that the operation seeks out and compromises poorly configured websites running the WordPress CMS.

Imperva in January said the attackers also scan for and exploit web apps built with the PHP programming language that have existing webshells or vulnerabilities. Once the weaknesses are exploited, the attackers install a GSocket, a backdoor that the attackers use to compromise