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Archive for the ‘Mass Web Attacks’ Category

According to ZDNet, during the last couple of hours, visitors of popular and high trafficked web sites such as CNN, BBC, Washington Post, Gamespot, WorldOfWarcraft, Mashable, Chow.com, ITpro.co.uk, AndroidCommunity, Engadget and Chip.de, started reporting that parts of the web sites are unreachable due to malware warnings appearing through the EyeWonder interactive digital advertising provider.

According to Google’s SafeBrowsing advisory for EyeWonder, the exploits were hosted on currently active and participating in the Cold Fusion injection attack domains, namely elfah .net, 2ici .cn and javazhu.3322 .org - the following have also managed to compromise Pakistan’s Telecommunication Authority.

By using RealPlayer Import stack overflow exploit and another one attempting a QVOD Player URL overflow, the cybercriminals then attempt to push eight different malware samples. Detection rates for the droppers are improving.

Interestingly, one of the malware samples attemps to download the updated list of malware binaries by connecting a compromised Italian site part of the Cold Fusion injection attacks (betheboss.it) since it appears to have been exploited in such a way.

This malware incident demonstrates how a single exploitation of a trusted third-party content/ad serving vendor can not only undermine its credibility, but potentially the credibility of the sites using the network. And since the ads on the affected sites are dynamically served through different networks, it remains questionable whether it was in fact EyeWonder that served malicious content, or a compromised partner of the network itself.

Case in point - the partnership between Facilitate Digital and EyeWonder comes in a very insecure fashion with EyeWonder having a permanent iFrame tag loading a domain (adsfac.us) belonging to Facilitate Digital on its front page.

For the time being, EyeWonder.com remains down for maintenance.

Credit: ZDNet.com Security Blogs

Hackers are running a mass compromise against sites running vulnerable ColdFusion application server installations.

Security watchers at the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Centre are warning that a “high number” of sites have been hit over the last 36 hours or so. Miscreants are exploiting sites running older installations of some ColdFusion applications, such as FCKEditor (a popular HTML text editor) or CKFinder (an Ajax file manager).

The two main strands of the assault both target FCKEditor. Firstly version 8.0.1 of ColdFusion installs a vulnerable version of FCKEditor that is enabled by default. The security flaw creates a means for criminals to upload arbitrary files on affected servers. Details of how to resolve this problem can be found on ColdFusion’s site.

The second strand of the attack relies on third party applications, in particular the CFWebstore e-commerce app, that incorporate vulnerable versions of FCKEditor.

Hackers are taking advantage of the vulnerabilities to plant malicious scripts onto compromised websites, as part of a drive-by download attack that ultimately aims to infect visiting surfers.

SANS reckons the crackers behind the attack are the same as the gang that pulled off a similar attack back in March. Security researchers urge sites to review their ColdFusion installations, paying particular attention to deleting older applications that may have been left around as orphans during systems upgrades.

Credit: The Register

The Iranian opposition coordinated a cyber attack yesterday that has successfully managed to disrupt access to major pro-Ahmadinejad Iranian web sites, including the President’s homepage which continues returning a “The maximum number of user reached, Server is too busy, please try again later…” message.

Through a combination of DIY (do it yourself) denial of service attack tools (DDoS), multiple iFrame loading scripts, public web page “refresher” tool, and a much more effective PHP script, the participants have already prompted some of the major Iranian outlets to switch to “lite” versions of their sites in an attempt to mitigate the attack.

The campaign appears to have been organized through Twitter, which despite public reports that the site has been banned in Iran, appears to be still accessible through a a persistent supply of proxy servers on behalf of the opposition.

Moreover, the ongoing distributed denial of service attacks, are using techniques which greatly resemble those used in last year’s Russia vs Georgia cyber attack, and the ones Chinese hacktivists used back in 2008 in order to temporarily shut down CNN, with a single exception - there’s no indication of a botnet involvement in the present attack.

Instead, the attack relies on the so called people’s information warfare concept, which is the self-mobilization of individuals, or their recruitment based on political/nationalistic sentiments by a third-party, for conducting various hacktivism activities such as web site defacements, or launching distributed denial of service attacks.

The following are some of the sites that are currently under attack, remain totally unresponsive, or return “server is too busy” error messages:

Ahmadinejad.ir - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Official Blog - under attack
Leader.ir - Office of the Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei - under attack
President.ir - Presidency of The Islamic Republic - under attack
Farsnnews.com - Fars News Agency - under attack
Irib.ir - Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting - under attack
Kayhannews.ir - News Portal - “Service Unavailable”
Irna.ir - Islamic Republic News Agency - “service unavailable”
Mfa.gov.ir - Ministry of foreign affairs , Islamic Republic of Iran - under attack
Moi.ir - Ministry of Interior - under attack
Police.ir - National Police - under attack
Justice.ir - Ministry of Justice - under attack
Presstv.ir - Iranian Press TV - “server is too busy”

Among the first web-based denial of service attack used, is a tool called “Page Rebooter” which is basically allowing everyone to set an interval for refreshing a particular page, in this case it’s 1 second. Pre-defined links to the targeted sites were then distributed across Twitter and the Web, through messages link the following :

“Please spread word about a cyber effort to exert pressure on the paramilitary in Iran. They have launched denial of service attacks on US websites that are run by live bloggers feeding us up to the minute information about what is going on in Iran on the ground. To fight back, open these two URLs in as many tabs/windows as possible and simply leave your computer running overnight! We must show solidarity with them in their quest for freedom! The 2nd link targets PressTV, the mouthpiece of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.”

The second stage of the campaign consisted in the distribution of a multiple iFrame loading script which was automatically refreshing farsnews.com, irna.ir and rajanews.com. The script has since changed its location and is advertised under a new domain.

The third stage included a combined attack, this time including DIY (do-it-yourself) denial of service tools (DDoS), which despite their primitive nature are indeed causing server overload for their targets. Each of the tools is distributed with a simple manual, including links to large images at the targeted web sites, one which the software using proxies will attempt to obtain automatically.

The tools themselves, BWRaeper.exe (detected as Worm.AutoIt.AA); PingFlooder.exe (flagged as banker malware); Server_Attack_By-_C-4.exe (Riskware.ServerAttack.F) and SupportIran.php, have already been picked up by antivirus vendors. The last tool is a basic PHP script targeting those running a server that supports PHP in order to use it.

SupportIran.php has also been released as an improved version to the multiple iFrame loader, and is currently used in the attack as well, having the following sites pre-defined to attack simultaneously - khamenei.ir; presstv.ir; irna.ir; president.ir; mfa.gov.ir; moi.ir; police.ir; justice.ir; live.irib.ir.

There have already been speculations that the magnitude of these local attacks — Iranian users targeting Iranian web sites – is contributing to the “strange changes in Iranian traffic transit” reported during the last couple of days. The attacks are still ongoing.

Credit: ZDNet.com Security Blogs

A large internet service provider said data for as many as 100,000 websites was destroyed by attackers who targeted a zero-day vulnerability in a widely-used virtualization application.

Technicians at UK-based Vaserv.com were still scrambling to recover data on Monday evening UK time, more than 24 hours after unknown hackers were able to gain root access to the company’s system. The attackers were able to penetrate his servers by exploiting a critical vulnerability in HyperVM, a virtualization application made by a company called LXLabs. Vaserv.com got hit by a zero-day exploit in version 2.0.7992 of the HyperVM application.

No one could receive a response to inquiries sent to LXLabs company, which according to its website is located in Bangalore.

Data for about half of the websites hosted on Vaserv was destroyed all at once sometime Sunday evening, shortly after administrators noticed “strangeness” on the system. The attackers had the ability to execute sensitive Unix commands on the system, including “rm -rf,” which forces a recursive delete of all files.

Some 50 percent of Vaserv’s customers signed up for unmanaged service, which doesn’t include data backup. It remains unclear of those website owners will ever be able to retrieve their lost data. As a result, at least half the websites that were hosted on the site remain offline.

“Since last night, I’ve had probably 40 phone calls from clients saying ‘Why is my website down,’” said Daniel Voyce, a web developer for Nu Order Webs who uses Vaserv to host customer sites. “It’s making me look bad.”

Voyce said the hackers, given the high level of server access they gained, were likely able to intercept a wealth of sensitive data stored on Vaserv’s servers. Voyce said his customers are safe because all sensitive information was encrypted.

Little is known about the people who attacked the site. So far, there are no known reports of individuals taking credit for the hack. The breach was likely the result of a SQL injection attack that penetrated Vaserv’s central management software and removed vital binaries and data for about half of all user data stored by the service.

Vaserv specializes in low-cost web hosting using VPS, or virtualized private servers. Virtualization features in LXLabs’ HyperVM helped Vaserv provide the service, which costs a fraction of the price of dedicated server hosting.

It remains unclear how other webhosts using the HyperVM have been affected.

Update: On Monday, the boss of LxLabs was found dead in a suspected suicide. Reports of the death of K T Ligesh, 32, come in the wake of the exploitation of a critical vulnerability in HyperVM. The effect of his death on the development of updated software by LxLabs is unknown at time of writing.

Ligesh was found hanged in his Bangalore house on Monday morning, after a late night drinking session. The Times of India reports that he was upset with the loss of a recent contract. Ligesh was also still coming to terms with the suicides by hanging of his sister and mother five years ago.

Security researchers at Milw0rm warn that the Kloxo (formerly Lxadmin) web hosting platform from LxLabs contains 24 security vulnerabilities and exploits. The flaws include SQL injection vulnerabilities and flaws that create a way for hackers to gain file access to files hosted on a vulnerable system.

The vulnerabilities are confirmed to affect Klaxo version 5.75, though other versions may also be affected. Milw0rm went public with an alert on the vulnerability last Thursday after failing to hear back from LxLabs in what it considered to be a timely manner.

LxLabs recently said that more than 30,000 virtualized private servers (vpses) were managed by HyperVM, and more than 8,000 servers running Kloxo. The largest single installation of hyperVM centrally manages more than 4000 VPSes.

Virtualization features of HyperVM allow hosting firms such as VAserv to provide low-cost web hosting at a fraction of the price of dedicated server hosting.

Credit: The Register

Early last week TrendLabs alerted a government agency about one of the pages in their site that appears to have been injected with malicious frames. The San Bernardino County site’s probation page was, during that time, carrying a frame that directs users to a known disease vector under the domain videosdivx(dot)net. The target URL bear the strings “KATRINA+HALILI+NUDE” which suggests that videos or pictures of the Filipino actress may be viewed from the URL. Halili is currently involved in a much talked about sex video scandal proliferating in the Philippines.

While the site is now clean, Threat Analyst Joseph Pacamarra found another attack capitalizing on the same sex video scandal, this time using the Ask George website, the state-wide information portal of Washington DC in the US. Accessing the said page, which had been injected with a script containing the words “katrina+halili+sexy+pic,” redirects to a site http://hot-unlikely-tube.com/xplaymovie.php?id=40039

Clicking on the black screen, the user is informed that he needs to download a codec to be able to watch the video. But instead of a codec, the user downloads malware: TROJ_DLOAD.TID and its payload, TROJ_COGNAC.J.

TROJ_COGNAC.J is saved as b.exe. It modifies the system registry to make sure it runs at every startup. It assists TROJ_DLOAD.TID in downloading files named qwerce.gif and a.exe from different URLs. As of this writing, the .gif file is non-malicious, and the URL that downloads a.exe is not accessible. While this means little danger for current victims of these attacks, the actual contents of the URLs may actually change any time to exhibit more dangerous side-effects.

The affected pages from Ask George appear to have been modified last May 30, early morning US time.

Credit: Ailene Dela Rosa, Trend Micro TrendLabs

UK celebrity gossip website Digital Spy has apologized after serving up banner ads laced with malware earlier this week. Digital Spy site is a high-traffic website and specialises in news about celebs and reality TV programs.

The mechanism or exact strain of malware featured during the attack remains unclear. News of the malware infected surfaced through numerous posts on Digital Spy’s forums. In response to requests for comment, Digital Spy offered a statement confirming the attack and pledging to revamp its procedures:

We can confirm that over the weekend it appears that Digital Spy was attacked by one or more ads containing some form of malware.

As a result of actions taken by our advertising operations team, we are confident that Digital Spy is malware-free and a safe site to use. We think that the attack happened through a practice known as chain buying, where inventory bought on our site is then re-sold to another provider, and possibly then others, making it progressively harder to verify the integrity of creative. We have made it very clear to our advertising partners that we do not find this practice being used as an attack vector in any way acceptable.

We have also changed, with immediate effect, our procedures when it comes to detecting a problem or receiving reports from our users of an issue.

What we would like to say is that we’re really sorry for the inconvenience and worry this has caused to some of our readers. We’re very disappointed that this happened and are changing the way we work both internally and with our partners to ensure we are less vulnerable to attack and that we deal with these incidents much faster.

Confirming the banner ads are laced with malware is tricky in cases where, as in the Digital Spy example, an “occasional” third party ad is probably behind the problem. Paul Baccas, senior threat researcher at Sophos, was not able to confirm anything but highlighted circumstantial evidence that ads served through the site contained malicious scripts.

“It looks like they have cleaned up and so cannot definitely confirm anything,” Baccas said. “The PDF linked to by mtwns DOT net is malicious and I will attempt to write some detection. The blueadvertise.com looks to be a GPT (Get Paid To) advertise site and they are notoriously dodgy,” he added.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, criticized Digital Spy’s handling of the incident and agreed with Reg readers that Digital Spy ought to have disabled banner ads while its investigated reports that they might be tainted with malware.

Underlining that warning, Symantec said that surfers visiting Digital Spy risk exposure to malware because of two drive-by download attacks. Users are reporting “strange behaviour” and attempts to install rogue security software after visiting the site. Over on the forum itself there’s talk of various types of Trojan associated with the compromise of Digital Spy.

Some commenters note the pattern of the attack against Digital Spy fits that associated with a much wider SQL injection based attack first spotted last week.

Credit: The Register

An infection that attempts to install a potent malware cocktail on the machines of end users has spread to about 30,000 websites run by businesses, government agencies and other organizations, researchers warned Friday.

The infection sneaks malicious javascript onto the front page of websites, most likely by exploiting a common application that leads to a SQL injection, said Stephan Chenette, manager for security research at security firm Websense. The injected code is designed to look like a Google Analytics script, and it uses obfuscated javascript, so it is hard to spot.

The malicious payload silently redirects visitors of infected sites to servers that analyze the end-user PC. Based on the results, it attempts to exploit one or more of about 10 different unpatched vulnerabilities on the visitor’s machine. If none exist, the webserver delivers a popup window that claims the PC is infected in an attempt to trick the person into installing rogue anti-virus software. The executed malware file has a very low AV detection rate.

The rogue anti-virus software uses polymorphic techniques to constantly alter its digital signature, allowing it to evade detection by the vast majority of legitimate anti-virus programs. Because it uses obfuscation, the javascript is also hard to detect by antivirus programs and impossible to spot using Google searches that scour the web for a common string or variable.

According to Chenette, “For the common user, it’s going to be possible but difficult to determine what the code is doing or if it’s indeed malicious. We can see this quickly growing.”

The infection shares many similarities with a mass website malady that’s been dubbed Gumblar. It too injects obfuscated javascript into legitimate websites in an attempt to attack visitors. So far, it’s spread to about 60,000 sites, Websense estimates.

Several differences in the way the javascript behaves, however, have led Websense researchers to believe the two attacks are unrelated.

The researchers have also noticed that the code, once it’s deobfuscated, points to web addresses that are misspellings of legitimate Google Analytics domains that many sites use to track visitor statistics. The RBN, or Russian Business Network, has used similar tactics in the past, and Websense is now working to determine whether those responsible for this latest attack have ties to that criminal outfit.

“It could be that the RBN is related, or more likely because that code was publicized, the attackers are acting in a very smart fashion to duplicate methods of old attacks to hide their tracks,” Chenette explained.

Credit: The Register

Security experts are urging administrators using Microsoft’s Internet Information Services version 6 to exercise extreme care following the discovery that the popular web server is vulnerable to a simple attack that exposes password-protected files and folders.

The vulnerability resides in the part of IIS6 that processes commands based on the WebDAV protocol. By adding several unicode characters to a web address, attackers can access sensitive files that are supposed to be available only with a system password. What’s more, the flaw can also be used to upload malicious files to protected parts of the server, according to Nikolaos Rangos, a security researcher who published his findings on Friday.

“The web server fails to properly handle unicode tokens when parsing the URI and sending back data,” his advisory warns. It goes on to show how several GET requests can give outsiders easy access to vulnerable systems.

The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team is already seeing “active exploitation” of the bug. The group is advising that WebDAV be temporarily disabled until things can be sorted out. The vulnerabilities are present in version 6 of IIS only, and WebDAV is not enabled by default.

Members of Microsoft’s security team are looking into the report, a spokesman said Monday morning. “We’re currently unaware of any attacks trying to use the claimed vulnerability or of customer impact,” he wrote in an email. As usual, Microsoft are among the last to realize there is a security vulnerability in their products, even if it’s already hitting multiple websites and soon to become into a massive plague.

According to the advisory, the following four strings are all that’s needed to access a theoretical password-protected file called protected.zip in a restricted folder called protected:

GET /..%c0%af/protected/protected.zip HTTP/1.1 Translate: f Connection: close Host: servername

The unicode character “%c0%af” is in essence converted to a “/” (or slash). The additional commands in turn prompt IIS6 to interpret the string as a valid file path. The web server dutifully responds by sending the attacker the file without first asking for authentication.

The attack can also be used to list, access, or upload files in a password-protected WebDAV folder, according to Rangos’s advisory. Secunia rates the bug “moderately critical,” the third-highest rating on its five-tier severity scale.

The report is oddly reminiscent of a directory traversal bug that plagued IIS in 2001. It happened because subroutines in IIS 4 and 5 for checking the security of user-supplied input happened before it was converted from unicode to ascii. That enabled data disclosure and denial-of-service attacks.

It is safe to assume this vulnerability will become a case of massive exploitation of thousands of websites that will in turn infect visitors with malware, scareware and keyloggers.

Credit: The Register

A compromise that is moving virally across websites is making unwitting people who surf to them part of a botnet that redirects Google search results, a security researcher has warned.

During the past week, the number of websites identified as infected have almost tripled, according to researcher Mary Landesman with real-time malware scanning specialist ScanSafe tracking the attacks since March. Normally, web compromises die out after a few weeks, as search engines and anti-virus programs grow wise to them. But that’s not happening this time.

“The growth rate is very unusual for this type of compromise, and the fact that it’s escalating so quickly is what has us concerned,” Landesman told The Reg.

The exploit code is unique for every website, making it impossible to identify a compromised site until someone has accidentally surfed there. It uses obfuscated Javascript that’s burrowed deep into a website’s source code to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in a visitor’s Adobe Flash and Reader programs. Victims then join a botnet that manipulates their Google search results.

The malware also sifts through a victim’s computer in search of FTP credentials that can be used to infect still more websites with the malicious Javascript. The combination of its stealth and ability to find new websites is allowing the infection to grow virally, Landesman said.

The goal of the malware appears to be to siphon dollars away from Google’s highly profitable advertising franchises. By injecting ads and links into certain searches, infected users see results that are different than they would otherwise be.

The longevity of the mass compromise speaks to the resourcefulness of the attackers. When they first set out, they dropped static attack code into PHP, HTML and other scripts of infected websites, but in time, website owners learned how to detect and remove the infection. The miscreants soon started a second wave of attacks that installed dynamically generated malware on infected sites as soon as the static script was removed.

The source of the latest Javascript is gumblar.cn, which has a Moscow IP address that reverses to ukservers.com. The injected scripts used in the gumblar.cn attacks appear to be dynamically obfuscated and thus may vary from site to site and even among pages on the same site.

The first portion of the script looks for a particular cookie and then tries to determine what scripting engine is being used. Based on those results, the script will then write out either a working or a non-working source reference. The attackers appear to be targeting Internet Explorer users by this process. The reason for the targeting is unclear because the exploits used to deliver the malware involve Adobe PDF and Adobe Flash (SWF) vulnerabilities which aren’t browser dependent.

The gumblar.cn compromise may also be accompanied by malicious iframes that load exploits and malware from domains hosted at 213.182.197.23, including liteautotop.cn, bigtruckstopseek.cn, autobestwestern.cn and several others. Both the 94.247.2.195 and 213.182.197.23 addresses are hosted in Latvia whereas the gumblar.cn domain has a Moscow IP that reverses to ukservers.com.  Coincidentally, the malware loaded in the most recent round of attacks results in the installation of a backdoor that attempts to communicate with a botnet command & control located at 78.109.29.112 -  a bot c&c with past ties to malware engaged in forcible redirects.

Credit: The Register
Credit: ScanSafe.com STAT Blog

A new strain of the Koobface worm is spreading across numerous social networking sites. The malware posts invitations to the friends of infected users inviting them to view a video. The linked website tries to trick prospective marks into believing they need an updated version of Adobe Flash Player plugin to view the clip. The software offered is, of course, loaded with Windows-specific Trojan code. This malware establishes a back-door on compromised Windows machines.

The first link takes the victim to a site supposedly hosting a video posted by the same person that sent the message. Not only was the malicious landing page displaying his name, it had also pulled the photo from his Facebook profile. This social engineering trick is supposed to make the victim believe that its the actual friend who sent the message.

Clicking the Install button redirects to a download site for the file setup.exe which is the new Koobface variant detected as WORM_KOOBFACE.AZ by Trend Micro. It is hosted on as many as 300 different unique IP addresses and the number will probably grow. All seen IP addresses hosting the said malicious file are now detected as HTML_KOOBFACE.BA by Trend Micro.

Analysis reveals that WORM_KOOBFACE.AZ propagates through facebook.com, hi5.com, friendster.com, myyearbook.com, myspace.com, bebo.com, tagged.com, netlog.com, fubar.com, livejournal.com. It first searches for cookies created by those sites. The worm then connects to a respective site using login credentials stored in the gathered cookies. It searches for an infected user’s friends, who are then sent messages containing a link where a copy of the worm is downloaded. It also sends and receives information from an infected machine by connecting to several servers. This also allows hackers to execute commands on the affected machine.

The attack follows the appearance of two rogue applications - “Error Check System” and Facebook closing down - last week which used misleading messages in order to hoodwink users into activating software packages. Neither app spread malware as such but Error Check System has been linked to indirect attempts to attract surfers to sites punting rogue anti-malware (AKA scareware) packages.

Credit: Rik Ferguson, Trend Labs
Credit: The Register