Ryan Naraine

AV Researcher Calls for Standard Threat Level Displays

GENEVA — A veteran security researcher today challenged the anti-malware industry to work on a standard way of assigning computer/Internet threat levels to present transparent helpful information to consumers and businesses.
During a presentation at the Virus Bulletin 2009 conference here, Fortinet project manager Bryan Lu discussed the current scenario where anti-malware vendor use different systems to display threat levels — either color-coded or using numbers and arrows — and suggested that vendors use existing data to make threat level indicators more useful and meaningful.

Beware the Tiny, Unknown Botnet

DarkReading’s Kelly Jackson Higgins is reporting on a new study that shows bot infections in the rise in the enterprise, most coming from  tiny, unknown botnets built for targeting victim organizations.

The three-month study of more than 600 different botnets found having infiltrated enterprise networks, researchers from Damballa discovered nearly 60 percent are botnets with only a handful to a few hundred bots built to target a particular organization. Only 5 percent of the bot infections were from big-name botnets, such as Zeus/ZDbot and Koobface. Read the full story [darkreading.com]

Talking Koobface with Ivan Macalintal

At the Virus Bulletin 2009 conference,Trend Micro security researcher Ivan Macalintal talks to Threatpost editor Ryan Naraine about the intricacies of the Koobface attack.  See more on this story here.

From Gimmiv to Conficker: MS08-067 Under The Microscope

by Ryan Naraine

GENEVA — The critical MS08-067 vulnerability used by the Conficker worm to build a powerful botnet continues to be a lucrative security hole for cybercriminals.
During a presentation at the Virus Bulletin 2009 conference here, a trio of Microsoft researchers dissected the malware attacks linked to MS08-067 and found that criminal gangs are still exploiting the flaw to plant data-theft Trojans on vulnerable Windows machines.

Dogrobot Malware Penetrates System Restore on Windows

by Ryan Naraine

GENEVA —  Cyber crime gangs in China are penetrating the hard disk recovery cards on computers in Internet cafes and using a combination of zero-day flaws, rootkits and ARP spoofing techniques to steal billions of dollars worth of online gaming credentials.
According to Microsoft anti-virus researcher Chun Feng, five generations of the Win32/Dogrobot malware family have perfected the novel rootkit technique to hijack System Restore on Windows — effectively allowing the malicious file to survive even after the compromised machine is reverted to its previous clean state.

Major Ad Servers Flooded With Malicious Ads

by Ryan Naraine

From IDG News Service (Robert McMillan)
Criminals flooded several online ad networks with malicious advertisements over the weekend, causing popular Web sites such as the Drudge Report, Horoscope.com and Lyrics.com to inadvertently attack their readers, a security company said Wednesday.
The trouble started on Saturday, when the criminals somehow placed the malicious ads on networks managed by Google’s DoubleClick, as well as two others: YieldManager and ValueClick’s Fastclick network.  Read the full story [computerworld.com]

Modern Banker Malware Undermines Two-Factor Authentication

by Ryan Naraine

Once pitched as an additional layer of security for E-banking transactions, two-factor authentication is slowly becoming an easy to bypass authentication process, to which cybercriminals have successfully adapted throughout the last couple of years. Read the full story [zdnet.com]. Also see this MIT Technology Review report on how cybercriminals managed to steal $447K despite the fact that two-factor authentication was in place.

PBS Website Compromised, Used to Serve Exploits

by Ryan Naraine

Some sections of the popular PBS.org Web site have been hijacked by hackers serving up a cocktail of dangerous exploits.
According to researchers at Purewire, attempts to access certain PBS Web site pages yielded JavaScript that serves exploits from a malicious domain via an iframe.

Microsoft Takes Aim at Malvertising Threat

by Ryan Naraine

Less than a week after a malicious advertising attack against the New York Times ad servers, Microsoft filed five civil lawsuits against companies allegedly using online advertising to serve malware.
The lawsuits allege that individuals using the business names “Soft Solutions,” “Direct Ad,” “qiweroqw.com,” “ITmeter INC.” and “ote2008.info” used malvertisements to distribute malicious software or present deceptive websites that peddled scareware to unsuspecting Internet users.

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