Tech talk: Cybereason takes on Operation Kofer

By ARIEL SHAPIRA
Computer keyboard [illustrative]. (photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
Computer keyboard [illustrative].
(photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
The third annual 2015 GO eCommerce summit, which took place last Wednesday at the David Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv, is the largest eCommerce event in Israel, with over 1,200 participants. The professional meetings held that day offered a great opportunity for participants to exchange ideas with each other as they searched for solutions to many of the challenges that exist today in online trade and digital marketing.
Speakers included CEOs of Israeli companies and leading retail-chain owners from abroad who discussed changes and innovations in eCommerce and the impact of global trends on the domestic market. The summit was organized by Meda Conferences in collaboration with the Israeli E-Commerce Executive Forum and NEXTER by Mako.
WallaShops CEO Eli Lavi gave a talk at the summit titled “New trends in eCommerce logistics.”
“Since the social protests a few years ago, consumer behavior has changed,” he said. “Nowadays, people are always trying to screw the system, and for good reason. People are constantly being overcharged. At WallaShops, we strive to offer the lowest possible prices and to provide complete transparency so customers feel secure and don’t feel the need to haggle to get lower prices.”
Buy2 CEO Aviv Refuah participated in a keynote panel titled, “Increasing sales by creating the perfect customer experience.”
“We purchased a platform meant to enable designers to create their own online websites,” he said. “We expect this site to help the market move forward.”
If Israelis were to increase their online buying significantly, this would give our economy a much-needed boost, Refuah said.
Alon Raz, the CEO of the Zap Group’s business division, gave a talk at the summit titled “Local on-demand economy” that addressed the changes taking place in the Israeli consumer model. “The traditional shopping model is slipping away,” he said.
“ECommerce is growing exponentially from year to year,” Raz said. “E-business is even entering areas that up until now were not engaged in eCommerce. For example, transportation company Uber, which lets you order a taxi, private car or ride-share from your cellphone, poses a great challenge for traditional taxi services. Using an app like Uber, passengers no longer need to have cash or a credit card available. It’s so obvious today that every service provider needs to have an app available for customers.
These days, people want to know at any given moment what the status of their order is.”
Efi Dahan, PayPal’s regional director for Israel and Africa, gave a lecture at the summit titled “Challenges and trends in the eCommerce world.”
“Eighty-two percent of Israelis who purchase items on the Internet are buying products from overseas,” he said. “In other words, people who are confident enough to make online purchases don’t mind that the supplier is not local. Israelis prefer to buy products locally and to receive customer service in the Hebrew language, which means there is a great potential for Israeli vendors here.”
Cybereason to the rescue
Cybereason Labs, an Israeli company that hunts cyber attacks in real time, discovered a massive operation used for the distribution of automatically generated ransomware variants, which has been named Operation Kofer. The attack creates and distributes software mutations that enable it to evade signature-based detection at a very sophisticated level, which up until now has only been carried out by global superpowers.
After dissecting a number of samples of the malware from a number of places around the world, Cybereason researchers identified traces of malicious activity and a combination of components that enabled them to evade detection by traditional antivirus and data-security products. Cybereason experts came to the conclusion that this was a single set of malicious software that uses an algorithm to produce malicious code automatically.
This algorithm has APT (advanced persistent threat) capabilities that enable it to carry out incredibly complex cyber attacks.
Cybereason is a privately held company that was founded in 2012 by three ex-military cybersecurity experts who served in the IDF’s Intelligence Unit 8200: Lior Div, Yonatan Striem-Amit and Yossi Naar.
The company has offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as in Tel Aviv.
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Translated by Hannah Hochner.


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