With more than a week until Adobe is scheduled to patch a critical vulnerability in its Reader and Acrobat applications, online thugs are targeting it with an unusually sophisticated attack.
The PDF file uses what's known as egg-hunting shellcode to compress the first phase of the malicious payload into 38 bytes, a tiny size that's designed to thwart anti-virus detection. As a result, just four of the 41 major AV programs detect the attack more than six days after the exploit surfaced, according to this analysis from Virus Total.
The shellcode then loads an obfuscated binary file contained in the PDF file that installs PoisonIvy, a backdoor client used to maintain control over infected PCs.
"Not only was this a very interesting example of a malicious PDF document carrying a sophisticated 'war head,' but it also showed the length attackers are willing to go to in order to make their malware as hard to detect as possible, not only for the AV vendors, but also for victims," wrote Bojan Zdrnja, a Sans handler who analyzed the exploit.
The PDF was distributed through email that was specifically targeted at an unnamed organization, Zdrnja, who is a senior information security consultant with Infigo, said in an interview with The Register. Based on the metadata found in the PDF, it originated in China and was produced on December 29.
Just to make the attack even harder for end users to detect, the obfuscated binary runs a third executable program that does nothing more than open a benign file called baby.pdf on the infected machine. Zdrnja believes this is done to deflect attention and prevent users from figuring out their PC has just been compromised.
In mid December, Adobe confirmed the critical flaw in Reader and Acrobat, but said a fix wouldn't come until January 12, the same day Microsoft is slated to release its next installment of security fixes. The vulnerability, which is classified as CVE-2009-4324, has been under targeted attack for more than three weeks. White hat hackers have also added an exploit to the Metasploit framework for penetration testers.
These latest in-the-wild attacks are bound to add fuel to critics who say Adobe software, which runs on well more than 95 percent of the world's computers, needs to be better screened for security vulnerabilities. The company is in the process of designing a new updater that will patch security holes in Reader, Acrobat, and Flash without requiring user interaction, according to the Zero Day blog. Beta users will begin testing it sometime this month.
This should come as good news. The wide availability of exploits targeting now-patched vulnerabilities suggests that a significant portion of users don't run the most recent version of the programs.
Adobe has also pledged to beef up the security of Reader and Acrobat by using software fuzzers and other tools to proactively find bugs that can be exploited. Since then, criminals have beat Adobe to spotting new critical vulnerabilities at least twice, including the latest attacks. ®
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Adobe To Surpass Microsoft As Hacker Target
By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
December 30, 2009
Adobe Reader and Flash will surpass Microsoft Office applications as favorite targets of cybercriminals, a security vendor predicted Tuesday.
In unveiling its 2010 Threat Predictions report, McAfee said the growing popularity of the Adobe products has attracted the attention of cybercriminals, who have been increasingly targeting the applications.
Adobe Reader and Flash are two of the most widely deployed applications in the world.
As a result of Adobe's success in client software, McAfee Labs believes "Adobe product exploitation will likely surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in 2010."
Security experts for quite a while have warned of the potential security risk posed by Flash. In November, Foreground Security identified a flaw in the way Web browsers handle Flash files that could be used to compromise Web sites that have users submit content.
Beyond Adobe, cybercriminals are also expected to step up efforts next year to crack social networking sites, as well as third-party applications in general. Internet users can expect crooks to use more complex Trojans and botnets to build and execute attacks and to take advantage of HTML 5 to create threats. HTML 5 is the next major revision of hypertext markup language, the core markup language of the Web.
InformationWeek
December 30, 2009
Adobe Reader and Flash will surpass Microsoft Office applications as favorite targets of cybercriminals, a security vendor predicted Tuesday.
In unveiling its 2010 Threat Predictions report, McAfee said the growing popularity of the Adobe products has attracted the attention of cybercriminals, who have been increasingly targeting the applications.
Adobe Reader and Flash are two of the most widely deployed applications in the world.
As a result of Adobe's success in client software, McAfee Labs believes "Adobe product exploitation will likely surpass that of Microsoft Office applications in 2010."
Security experts for quite a while have warned of the potential security risk posed by Flash. In November, Foreground Security identified a flaw in the way Web browsers handle Flash files that could be used to compromise Web sites that have users submit content.
Beyond Adobe, cybercriminals are also expected to step up efforts next year to crack social networking sites, as well as third-party applications in general. Internet users can expect crooks to use more complex Trojans and botnets to build and execute attacks and to take advantage of HTML 5 to create threats. HTML 5 is the next major revision of hypertext markup language, the core markup language of the Web.
RockYou sued over data breach
By Elinor Mills
InSecurity Complex
CNET News
December 30, 2009
An Indiana man filed a lawsuit against RockYou this week alleging that the provider of social-networking apps failed to secure its network and protect customer data, enabling a hacker to grab passwords of 32 million users earlier this month.
The suit seeking class action status was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by lawyers for Alan Claridge, of Evansville, Ind., who registered with RockYou in August 2008 to use a photo-sharing application. RockYou is a publisher and developer of online apps and services like "SuperWall" on Facebook and "Slideshow" on MySpace.
Claridge said he received an e-mail from RockYou on December 16 informing him that his sensitive, personally identifiable information, including e-mail address and password, may have been compromised in a security breach, according to the suit.
Security firm Imperva notified RockYou on December 4 that it had learned of a breach of RockYou's network from underground hacker forums. RockYou had been hit with a common type of exploit known as a SQL injection flaw that targets information stored in databases and hackers were regularly discussing the fact that the hole at RockYou was being exploited, the lawsuit said.
InSecurity Complex
CNET News
December 30, 2009
An Indiana man filed a lawsuit against RockYou this week alleging that the provider of social-networking apps failed to secure its network and protect customer data, enabling a hacker to grab passwords of 32 million users earlier this month.
The suit seeking class action status was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by lawyers for Alan Claridge, of Evansville, Ind., who registered with RockYou in August 2008 to use a photo-sharing application. RockYou is a publisher and developer of online apps and services like "SuperWall" on Facebook and "Slideshow" on MySpace.
Claridge said he received an e-mail from RockYou on December 16 informing him that his sensitive, personally identifiable information, including e-mail address and password, may have been compromised in a security breach, according to the suit.
Security firm Imperva notified RockYou on December 4 that it had learned of a breach of RockYou's network from underground hacker forums. RockYou had been hit with a common type of exploit known as a SQL injection flaw that targets information stored in databases and hackers were regularly discussing the fact that the hole at RockYou was being exploited, the lawsuit said.
The Decade's 10 Most Dastardly Cybercrimes
By Kevin Poulsen
Threat Level
Wired.com
December 31, 2009
It was the decade of the mega-heist, when stolen credit card magstripe tracks became the pork bellies of a new underground marketplace, Eastern European hackers turned malware writing into an art, and a nasty new crop of purpose-driven computer worms struck dread in the heart of America.
Now that the zero days are behind us, it's time to reflect on the most ingenious, destructive or groundbreaking cybercrimes of the first 10 years of the new millennium.
2000 - MafiaBoy
Once upon a time, "distributed denial of service attacks" were just a way for quarreling hackers to knock each other out of IRC. Then one day in February 2000, a 15-year-old Canadian named Michael "MafiaBoy" Calce experimentally programmed his botnet to hose down the highest traffic websites he could find. CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Dell and eTrade all buckled under the deluge, leading to national headlines and an emergency meeting of security experts at the White House.
Compared to modern DDoS attacks, MafiaBoy's was trivial. But his was the cyberstrike that put the internet's security issues on a national stage, and inaugurated an era where any pissed off script kiddy could take down part of the web at will.
2002 - California Payroll Database Breach
On April 5, 2002, an unidentified hacker penetrated a California server housing the state government's payroll database, gaining access to names, Social Security numbers and salary information for 265,000 state workers from the governor on down. The breach itself was small potatoes, but when it emerged that the California Controller's Office had waited two weeks to warn the victims, angry lawmakers reacted by passing the nation's first breach disclosure law, SB1386.
The law requires hacked organizations to promptly warn potential identity theft victims. Its passage pulled the rock off the string of major corporate breaches that companies would have preferred to hush up.
Today, 45 states have enacted similar laws.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/ye_cybercrimes/
Threat Level
Wired.com
December 31, 2009
It was the decade of the mega-heist, when stolen credit card magstripe tracks became the pork bellies of a new underground marketplace, Eastern European hackers turned malware writing into an art, and a nasty new crop of purpose-driven computer worms struck dread in the heart of America.
Now that the zero days are behind us, it's time to reflect on the most ingenious, destructive or groundbreaking cybercrimes of the first 10 years of the new millennium.
2000 - MafiaBoy
Once upon a time, "distributed denial of service attacks" were just a way for quarreling hackers to knock each other out of IRC. Then one day in February 2000, a 15-year-old Canadian named Michael "MafiaBoy" Calce experimentally programmed his botnet to hose down the highest traffic websites he could find. CNN, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Dell and eTrade all buckled under the deluge, leading to national headlines and an emergency meeting of security experts at the White House.
Compared to modern DDoS attacks, MafiaBoy's was trivial. But his was the cyberstrike that put the internet's security issues on a national stage, and inaugurated an era where any pissed off script kiddy could take down part of the web at will.
2002 - California Payroll Database Breach
On April 5, 2002, an unidentified hacker penetrated a California server housing the state government's payroll database, gaining access to names, Social Security numbers and salary information for 265,000 state workers from the governor on down. The breach itself was small potatoes, but when it emerged that the California Controller's Office had waited two weeks to warn the victims, angry lawmakers reacted by passing the nation's first breach disclosure law, SB1386.
The law requires hacked organizations to promptly warn potential identity theft victims. Its passage pulled the rock off the string of major corporate breaches that companies would have preferred to hush up.
Today, 45 states have enacted similar laws.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/ye_cybercrimes/
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Saturday, 26 December 2009
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Merry Christmas,
From today iRemove Amsterdam is fully active. Come visit us
http://iremove.nl
PC Repair Amsterdam, Virus & Malware Removal, Online Discount Antivirus/Antispam Programs , Fresh installations of Various Operating Systems, including Windows 7 All Verions.
Advanced Online Protection Tutuorials
Remote Assistance
Contact us for information on easy upgrade from home, very cheap & fast service. All Versions of Microsfot Platforms available.
Free Travel costs (Amsterdam) & Online Diagnostics .
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