Science is key to solving global problems such as pandemics and climate change, but we need leaders who listen to science. Physics professor and Nobel Prize Laureate Kip Thorne, who chaired the international jury of the ESET Science Award, called for respect for science in his speech. The ESET Science Award is an ambitious project run by global cybersecurity company ESET, which recognizes the best scientists in Slovakia whose work makes a difference on a global scale.

Bratislava, Slovakia, October 15 – Professor Kip Thorne received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the first direct detection of gravitational waves whose signal was generated by the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago. Professor Thorne is not only a phenomenal scientist, but he also consulted on and co-authored Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film Interstellar.

In his latest speech as the ESET Science Award international jury chair, Professor Thorne pointed out the importance of listening to scientists and respecting scientific knowledge.

“Science and technology based on scientific research are key to solving problems such as pandemics or climate change. But I consider it equally important to encourage the respect of politicians and the public for science and scientists.”

Professor Thorne reiterated that viral diseases are one of humanity’s most serious problems today. “Many countries have ignored the voice of scientists in dealing with the pandemic. Slovakia can be a positive example for the world, on how scientific solutions can save many lives,” he explained with regards to the current COVID-19 situation, while pointing out the original Slovak research on the coronavirus.

Funded by the ESET Foundation, a team of Slovak scientists developed their own internationally validated COVID-19 tests. In a rapid response to the pandemic, the team donated 100,000 kits for routine testing to the Slovak Republic and has made the tests available to other countries.

Since joining as the chair of the international jury of the second year of the ESET Science Award, Professor Thorne is dedicated to support the initiative in the coming years. The ESET Foundation and ESET continue in their goal of supporting and recognizing scientists and researchers in Slovakia – and, in the future, in other parts of the world.

“We need new generations of leaders who will lead the world to responsible and science-based solutions. The key benefit of the ESET Science Award is this inspiration and recognition of how important science is for society,” said Professor Thorne.

The ESET Science Award is held under the auspices of Zuzana Čaputová, President of the Slovak Republic, and has received praise from international personalities such as Sir Roger Penrose, who is one the recipients of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics.

“I believe that the authority of science and scientists should be taken into account in the public discourse too. Because not only do we live in an era with a global pandemic, but also an infodemic, one which is defined by the systematic production of misinformation,” Mrs. Čaputová said in her opening address.

At the ceremony, Fedor Šimkovic was named laureate in the category Outstanding Personality of Slovak Science, Tamás Csanádi was named winner in the Outstanding Young Scientist under 35 category, and Ivan Varga became the Outstanding University Teacher laureate.

The ESET Science Award jury comprised other excellent scientists and researchers, namely, the Czech chemist Hana Dvořáková, British biologist Fiona Watt, German physicist Rolf-Dieter Heuer (former Director of CERN), German chemist Ralf Riedel and Hungarian mathematician Tibor Krisztin.

For more information, visit www.esetscienceaward.sk/en, watch Professor Thorne’s video here and read more about the winners at here.

*Notes to editors
Photography available on request.

 

BRATISLAVA, PRAGUE – ESET researchers have today published a white paper detailing their findings on the interconnected nature of Latin American banking trojan families. Even though Latin American banking trojans can be looked upon as one homogeneous group of malware, ESET reports that multiple distinct malware families can be recognized. At the same time, ESET researchers have discovered a surprising number of indicators of close cooperation among Latin American banking trojan authors. Despite the term “Latin American,”  some of the trojans have been targeting Spain and Portugal since late last year. The white paper was first published during the VB2020 localhost conference.

“Over the past year, we have been publishing an ongoing blog post series about Latin American banking trojan families. These blog posts mainly focus on the most important and interesting aspects of these families,” says Jakub Souček, one of the researchers working on Latin American financial cybercrime. “At the VB conference, we looked at these families from a high-level perspective. Rather than examining details of each family and highlighting their unique characteristics, we focused on what they have in common.”  

The first similarities ESET spotted were in the actual implementation of these banking trojans. The most obvious are the practically identical implementations of the banking trojans’ core functionalities and attack techniques via fake pop-up windows carefully designed to lure victims into providing sensitive information. Besides that, these malware families share third-party libraries, generally unknown string encryption algorithms, and both string and binary obfuscation techniques.

Other similarities can be observed in malware distribution. The trojans usually check for a marker used to indicate that the machine has already been compromised and download data in ZIP archives. ESET also observed identical distribution chains distributing several different payloads and shared execution methods.

“Additionally, different families use similar spam email templates in their latest campaigns, almost as if this was a coordinated move,” says Souček. “Since we don’t believe it to be possible that independent malware authors would come up with so many common ideas – and, moreover, since we don’t believe one group to be responsible for maintaining all these malware families – we must conclude that these are multiple threat actors closely cooperating with each other.”  

For more technical details about this spyware, read the white paper “LATAM financial cybercrime: Competitors in crime sharing TTPs” on WeLiveSecurity. Make sure to follow ESET Research on Twitter for the latest news from ESET Research.