The Blackhole exploit kit has made a surprising reappearance two years after cybercriminals stopped using it, according to security vendor Malwarebytes.
Exploit kits are frameworks planted on Web pages that try to find software flaws on the computers in order to silently install malware.
Blackhole was one of most popular exploit kits, but it faded from prominence after its alleged creator, who went by the nickname Paunch,
was arrested in Russia. The kit was sold or rented to other cybercriminals in the underground economy for hacking tools.
About four years ago, the source code for Blackhole was leaked, which led to more cybercriminals using it. But exploit kits require quite a bit of ongoing maintenance, and fresh exploits for new vulnerabilities need to be integrated to maintain high infection rates.
For some reason, whoever decided to start using Blackhole recently made a large error and left the server that hosted the exploit kit's infrastructure open on the Internet, which allowed Malwarebytes to take a look.
