FireEye Intern Accused in Massive Darkode Case

This is Morgan Culbertson 20 year old from Pittsburgh and he was an intern at a leading security firm FireEye. Until on Wednesday the U.S. Justice Department announced a massive international bust of Darkode, an online black market for hackers.  Morgan was accused of developing an Android malware capable of stealing data and overtaking control on device.

Culbertson is also a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and he has been an intern at FireEye not once but twice. His main duties involved researching android malware, code analysis and reverse engineering.

Government accused a 20 year old hacker and claimed that he has created an infamous Dendroid malware, sold on underground forums, which allowed anyone who payed 300$ fee to turn any Android app into malware. Culbertson even provided 24 hour support.

Dendroid got attention of Symantec and Trend Micro in march and they both issued warnings and reports. They warned Android users that it allowed hackers to remotely — and quietly — take screenshots, photos, videos and audio recordings.

However the most interesting part of the story and probably not unexpected one is that Dendroid creator has compromised FireEye’s software, while being on internship, and used the cyber security firm’s knowledge and tools for criminal activities . According to Culbertson’s online cv, he has completed a 12 week internship at FireEye as part of the Advanced Persistent Threat team as a Mobile Malware Research intern.

We will update you on this case as soon as we get our hands on related news!