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attacks

How a free breakfast day at McDonalds can lead to malware danger

McDonald's Meal Malware

McDonald's Meal Malware

I don’t know if you’re the sort of person who wakes up in the morning, and the first thing you long for is a McDonalds’ breakfast – but if you are, you might just be exactly what malware authors are looking for.

Researchers at SophosLabs have seen a malicious email that has been spammed out across the world in the last couple of days pretending to come from McDonalds.

The email claims that the fast-food giant is offering free breakfasts in each and every of their many thousands of restaurants around the globe. Chances are that there are many people who would love the prospect of munching on a McDonalds first thing in the morning.

McMalware Email

McMalware Email

Part of the email reads as follows:

McDonalds invites you to The Free Breakfast Day which will take place on 26 June, 2011, in every cafe of ours.

Free Day’s menu!
- Ranch Snack Wrap (Crispy)
- Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips
- Premium Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken
- Strawberry Triple Thick Shake
- McCafe Hot Chocolate

Print the invitation card attached to the letter and show it at the cash desk of any of our restaurants.

But beware! There is no such thing as a free lunch… or breakfast.

The attached file is, of course, malicious. Sophos detects the ZIP file as Troj/BredoZp-DV and the Invitation_Card.exe file contained within as the Troj/Bredo-HU Trojan horse.

In an attempt to fool computer users into believing the file is safe, the EXE file has a Word icon.

Don’t forget – you should always be suspicious of unsolicited attachments sent to you via email!

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/06/21/free-breakfast-day-mcdonalds-malware/

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WordPress Warns Of Trojanized Plug-Ins, Urges Patching

Wordpress Security

Wordpress Security

Attackers added a back door to three plug-ins that were available for download from WordPress for more than 24 hours.

WordPress on Tuesday warned all users who run its software on their own servers to beware a trio of malicious plug-ins for its content management software, which may have been available for download from the site for more than 24 hours.

“Earlier today the WordPress team noticed suspicious commits to several popular plugins–AddThis, WPtouch, and W3 Total Cache–containing cleverly disguised backdoors. We determined the commits were not from the authors, rolled them back, pushed updates to the plugins, and shut down access to the plugin repository while we looked for anything else unsavory,” said a warning from Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress, released on Tuesday.

Plug-ins extend WordPress functionality, and the ones called out in the security warning offer an interface with social networking sites (AddThis), mobile and iPad versions of WordPress blogs (WPtouch), and server performance enhancements (W3 Total Cache). AddThis and W3 Total Cache have been downloaded at least 500,000 times, and the free version of WPtouch, more than two million times.

Mullenweg said that while an investigation is underway and there’s no evidence that attackers compromised the WordPress site, WordPress just to be safe has forcibly reset all passwords for WordPress.org, which is the site where users can download WordPress. “To use the forums, [development site] Trac, or commit to a plugin or theme, you’ll need to reset your password to a new one”–by using the log-in page–said Mullenweg.

Plug-ins extend WordPress functionality, and the ones called out in the security warning offer an interface with social networking sites (AddThis), mobile and iPad versions of WordPress blogs (WPtouch), and server performance enhancements (W3 Total Cache). AddThis and W3 Total Cache have been downloaded at least 500,000 times, and the free version of WPtouch, more than two million times.

Mullenweg said that while an investigation is underway and there’s no evidence that attackers compromised the WordPress site, WordPress just to be safe has forcibly reset all passwords for WordPress.org, which is the site where users can download WordPress. “To use the forums, [development site] Trac, or commit to a plugin or theme, you’ll need to reset your password to a new one”–by using the log-in page–said Mullenweg.

In addition, he said that any users of the three Trojanized plug-ins who updated them “in the past day” (meaning Monday or Tuesday) should upgrade those plug-ins immediately.

Plug-ins, malicious or otherwise, continue to account for an increasing number of vulnerabilities seen in applications, both on PCs (for example, with browsers) and in Web applications (such as WordPress). In terms of WordPress, plug-ins now account for 80% of all WordPress-related vulnerabilities, according to HP DVLabs.

But some plug-in vulnerabilities are worse than others. “Web-based backdoors can be extremely dangerous,” said Paul Ducklin, head of technology for Sophos in the Asia Pacific region, in a blog post. “If you’re a WordPress user, you’ll know that the WordPress platform includes a complete and powerful administration interface, password-protected, via a URL such as “site.example/wp-admin.” A WordPress backdoor might offer something with similar functionality, but using a different, unexpected, URL, and using a password known to the hacker, instead of to you.”

Another danger is that if attackers managed to steal WordPress passwords, they might attempt to use them to access other sites. According to Mullenweg, “as a user, make sure to never use the same password for two different services, and we encourage you not to reset your password to be the same as your old one.”

Unfortunately, password reuse remains rampant as numerous, recent attacks have shown, such as when LulzSec released stolen databases containing usernames and passwords–such as the release of 37,608 SonyPictures.com passwords, which researchers have cross-referenced with other leaked databases.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/231000230

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The Best Antivirus Software in 2011, According to PC Magazine

The Best Antivirus Software in 2011

Best Antivirus Software, 2011

Antivirus vendors have included “2011″ in their product names since the summer of 2010. Now that the year 2011 has actually arrived it’s time for a new look at the whole collection. Several of the latest additions attempt to crank up protection by running two different antivirus engines, and some actually succeed. This batch also brings a new Editors’ Choice for free antivirus and a new shared Editors’ Choice for commercial antivirus.

As always, when I say “antivirus” I mean a utility that protects against all kinds of malicious software, not just viruses. Trojans, spyware, rootkits, keyloggers, adware, scareware – a proper antivirus must handle all of these.

Standalone or Suite?
Many of this year’s products blur the line between standalone antivirus and security suite. In the past the presence of a personal firewall has been one defining suite element; not any more. There’s a fully-functional firewall inside Panda Antivirus Pro 2011. eScan Anti-Virus 11 and McAfee AntiVirus Plus 2011 also offer firewall protection. Norton AntiVirus 2011 doesn’t include a complete firewall, but its intrusion prevention feature is more effective against exploits than most full-blown suites.

Spam filtering is another component typically found in a suite. The spam filter built into BullGuard Antivirus 10 is reasonably accurate and unusually helpful at setup time. eScan also offers a spam filter, but it’s not something you’d want to inflict on your Inbox.

StopSign Internet Security 1.0 includes an optional firewall with spam filtering built in. None of the independent labs have tested it, though, and its performance in my own malware blocking and removal tests was so poor that I didn’t bother evaluating those optional features.

BitDefender Antivirus Pro 2011 offers full remote management of other BitDefender installations across the network. McAfee can monitor other installations remotely and fix problems. Panda and Norton can at least let you know when another installation has problems, though they won’t fix those problems remotely.

BitDefender includes a very effective phishing prevention tool, as does G Data AntiVirus 2011. The LinkScanner component in AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011 also works to block phishing sites, as does McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. AVG and Norton both scan the links on your Facebook pages to protect you from Facebook scams and viruses. BitDefender and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 both check your system for security vulnerabilities, though BitDefender takes the concept a bit farther.

Outpost Antivirus Pro 7.0 and BitDefender can block transmission of user-defined private data, a feature usually found only in suites. Ad-Aware Pro Internet Security 9.0, AVG, Kaspersky, and McAfee will tune system performance and wipe out traces of computer and Internet use. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the product is “only” an antivirus, not a full suite.

The true standalone antivirus isn’t dead, however. For example, F-Secure Anti-Virus 2011 sticks to the business of virus protection without any sign of morphing into a mini-suite.

Twin-Engine Trend
Several late-season additions aim to double your protection by using two antivirus engines, with varying degrees of success. G Data’s dual scan doesn’t take much longer than the average single-engine product, and it includes powerful phishing protection. However, it doesn’t thoroughly clean up the threats it detects, and a failed cleanup effectively killed one test system. TrustPort Antivirus 2011 ran a bit slower than G Data and failed significantly in my testing. After its alleged removal some threats were still running. In the malware blocking test a few threats that it claimed to block managed to install and launch anyway.

Double Anti-Spy Professional v2 turned in the best performance of the twin-engine antivirus tools. It scans first with one engine, then with the other, and it also requires two separate updates. It’s noticeably slow, but effective enough that it’s worth waiting for.

Adjustable Interfaces, Built-in Support
Some users want to hear about every little security event, but most prefer a product that just does the job, without making a fuss. Ad-Aware Pro appeals to both with a choice of simple or advanced mode. BitDefender goes even further. Not only can its users choose basic, intermediate or expert view, they can build a personal collection of their most-used tools.

Webroot AntiVirus with Spy Sweeper 2011 totally focuses on keeping everything as simple as possible. It updates automatically, scans while the system is idle, and interacts with the user through a completely redesigned interface. All the detail a tech-savvy user might want is available, but hidden when not needed.

The user interface for Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus + 2011 discards the standard landscape-orientation window for a skinny vertical panel that takes up minimal space. McAfee, too, has switched to a vertical interface.

Norton reserves a panel across the bottom of its main window for interaction and communication with other security components. Initially the panel shows an interactive world map of security activity, but it can also connect with Norton Safe Web for Facebook or with your Norton Online Backup account.

Built-in and automated support features grace many of these tools. BitDefender includes a search box for help topics right on its main screen; a built-in tool will gather system information and contact an agent for chat-based support. Norton’s one-click support system gathers diagnostics and offers relevant FAQs or chat-based support. Kaspersky’s built-in support tool can send diagnostic reports to the company and process purpose-built scripts to fix specific problems. Panda’s PSCAN lets remote analysts request samples and push fixes without requiring full chat-type interaction. BullGuard offers built-in access to e-mail and live chat support with a message center to manage your support interactions. eScan links to live chat and online help.

[click to continue…]

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Top 10 Security Threats for 2011

Top Ten Security Threats - 2011

Top Ten Security Threats

Imperva announced their predictions for the top ten security trends for 2011 which have been compiled to help IT security professionals defend their organization against the next onslaught of cyber security threats.

The trends have been detailed below:

1. Nation-sponsored hacking: When APT meets industrialization
Nation-sponsored hacking specifically-targeted cyber attacks will incorporate concepts and techniques from the commercial hacker industry. These campaigns will contain a different malware payload than the traditional attacks conducted for monetary gain. However, these attacks will use similar techniques. These Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks will borrow techniques, such as automation and viral distribution, making them all the more powerful and potentially more successful. An example of such an attack is Stuxnet, which was not searching for data to monetize, rather it was focused on gaining control of crucial infrastructure.

Both classes of attack (hacker industry and APT) are going to use some of the same techniques so some security controls are applicable to both. On the positive side, given you’re covered against the cyber mafia you should have some of the controls to be protected from certain APT attacks. As APT is persistent, if a certain attack does not succeed, another one will come into play. The traditional security controls do not deter these relentless, state-sponsored hacker organizations. For the enterprise as well as government, this means increasing monitoring of traffic and setting security controls across all organization layers.


2. The insider threat is much more than you had imagined
In this upcoming year, we expect to see a growing awareness to security incidents of an “insider job” nature. Attention will grow as a consequence of an increased flow of incident reports where data theft and security breaches are tied to employees and other insiders. The cause of this trend will be the emphasis put on new regulations covering the act of notification and disclosure (rather on the actual protection of data).

To deter insider threats, organizations should therefore:

  • Enforce access controls such that access is based only a business need-to-know level. This includes eliminating excessive privileges.
  • Provide the proper access auditing tools to data centers. These auditing tools should monitor who accesses what data

3. Man in the Browser attacks will man up
Man in the Browser (MitB) attack sophistication is going to increase, as well as moving forward to more types of online applications. As a consequence, more online service providers are going to include this in their list of priorities for 2011, shifting the responsibility for mitigating the risk from the consumers to the service providers.

While avoiding infection by proxy Trojans is presumably the responsibility of consumers, MitB attacks are quickly becoming a concern of online service providers. The actual rate of infection and the proliferation of the many types of MitB malware suggest that providers must be able to serve (and protect) customers who might be infected with one type of malware or another. Just as the evolution of vehicle safety drove manufacturers to include device such as ABS, Air Bags and ESP, rather than rely on us to drive carefully, so will online service providers need to invest in mechanisms that allow them to conduct business with allegedly infected consumers. Among the technologies that we foresee as helpful are strong device identification, client profiling, fast security code evolution, session flow tracking and site-to-client authentication.

[click to continue…]

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Google Says Hundreds Of Gmail Accounts Hijacked

Google Gmail Hacked

Google Gmail Hacked

An attack from China has affected hundreds of users, including senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries such as South Korea, military personnel, and journalists.

Google has detected a campaign to gather Gmail account credentials that appears to originate from Jinan, China, and is warning users to take a few minutes to review their security settings.

Eric Grosse, engineering director for Google’s security team, said in a blog post that hundreds of users have been affected, including senor U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries such as South Korea, military personnel, and journalists.

“The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users’ emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples’ forwarding and delegation settings,” Grosse said.

By changing these settings, which are only evident through the appropriate Gmail Settings tab page, the attackers could generate copies of incoming and outgoing email that would be forwarded without the account holder’s knowledge.

Google declined to provide further details or information about those it believes may be behind the attack.

In January 2010, Google reported that it had uncovered “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” Google said at the time that it had reason to believe that one of the main goals of the attackers was to compromise the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

In that respect, the attack was not very successful: While Google acknowledged that the attackers had stolen unspecified intellectual property, it stressed that only two Gmail accounts appeared to have been accessed.

Jinan, capital of Shandong Province in Eastern China, happens to be the location of the Lanxiang Vocational School, one of the two Chinese schools linked to the 2010 attack against Google.

An October 2009 report on Chinese cyber espionage prepared by defense contractor Northrop Grumman said that the Chinese military maintains at least six technical reconnaissance bureaus for gathering cyber intelligence in the Lanzhou, Jinan, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Beijing military regions.

The current attack differs from the 2010 attack in that it doesn’t involve a vulnerability in Google’s infrastructure; it is simply a phishing campaign to dupe users into revealing their Gmail login credentials.


Google said that it detected the phishing campaign through its cloud-based security and abuse detection systems, through the reports from users, and through a report published in February on the Contagio blog, a collection of malware samples and threat analysis. The company said it has notified victims and the relevant government authorities.

Google is advising Gmail users to consider steps to improve the security of their accounts. The company recommends using two-factor verification, using a strong password, only entering account information at the proper Google domain, checking Gmail settings for unknown forwarding addresses or unauthorized account delegation, watching for suspicious account activity warnings, using Google Chrome, and reviewing security education materials available online.

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Fake AV, SEO Poisoning Top Malware Threats

ZDNet's Scareware GuideAttackers increasingly focused on fake antivirus and black-hat SEO techniques to target victims on the Web in April.

The volume of malware continued to increase in April as online scammers and malware distributors took advantage of major events according to security experts. Fake antivirus software and poisoned image search links were particularly prevalent in April.

There were over 73,000 new variants of malware released daily in April, a 26 percent increase over April 2010, GFI Software found in its monthly analysis released May 16. Cyber-criminals exploited several high-profile events, including the U.K. Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Easter holiday, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space and the release of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Seven of the top 10 malware threats were Trojans, according to GFI’s top 10 malware list for the month. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT, a generic malware classification that encompasses a variety of Trojans, continued to be the biggest threat, accounting for over 20 percent of total malware detected. The Zeus/Spyeye Trojan and fake antivirus were also part of the top 10. [click to continue…]

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Symantec claims spam continuing its downward spiral

Symantec Security

The latest state of spam and phishing report from Symantec claims to show that spam levels are continuing to fall in the wake of the takedown of the Rustock botnet back in March of this year.

The report appears to confirm reports from the BBC and security researcher Brian Krebs, although the slightly bad news is that phishing volumes appear to be up.

Delving into the statistics from the report shows that March spam dropped by 27.4% in that month, along with a further drop of 5.4% in April.

This means that spam now accounts for 74.8% of all email messages – a significant drop on the 89.2% figure noted in April last year, Infosecurity notes.

Phishing levels, however, rose by 15.6% in April says Symantec, noting that this growth was fuelled by a rise in phishing websites created by attack kits, which increased by 26.2%.

According to the security vendor’s report, many of the phishing attacks seen exploited the death of Osama bin Laden and spoofed legitimate media brands as the source to create trust and a feeling of authenticity.

These attacks, notes the report, attempted to trick users into clicking on links that supposedly led to uncensored photos and videos from the raid but instead pointed to malicious files or poisoned web pages.

Phishing attacks do appear to be taking over from spam, as the report notes that phishing emails that used unique URLs increased by 12.3% during April.

Phishing websites with IP domains instead of alphanumeric ‘regular’ web addresses, also increased slightly during April by about 5.5%, and web hosting services comprised 12.0% of all phishing, a massive increase of 10.3% from the previous month.

Interestingly, Symantec found that 89.0% of the phishing sites were hosted on free web hosting sites, whilst 13.0% were typosquatting – typosquatting refers to the practice of registering domain names that are typo variations of popular websites.

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Top 10 Malware Threats reported by GFI Software for February

According to GFI Application, a trend observed since last summer continued, with lots of of the same types of Trojan horses continuing to dominate the threat landscape. GFI’s statistics revealed that Trojans made up three of the top 10 malware threats in February 2011. Topping the list, Trojans detected as Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT accounted for 22.97 percent of total detections, holding its spot as the number one threat.

GFI Application has announced the top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of February 2011 as detected by scans performed by its anti-malware solution, VIPRE Antivirus, & its antispyware gizmo, CounterSpy.

These Trojans are downloaders associated with rogue security programs known as Fake Antivirus application, sometimes known as “scareware”. One time they are on a use’s process, these programs perform a fake scan of a victim’s computer for malware then display false warnings that the machine is infected in an try to persuade victims to buy fake security application.

The top 10 results represent the number of times a specific malware infection was detected in the coursework of GFI’s VIPRE & CounterSpy scans that document back to GFI’s community of opt-in users. These threats are classified as moderate to extreme based on process of installation among other criteria established by GFI Labs.

Top 10 Detections for February 2011 as reported by GFI Software:

1
 Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT Trojan
22.97%
2
 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen Trojan
3.46%
3
 Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra Trojan
2.89%
4
 Zugo LTD (v) Adware
2.52%
5
 Fraudtool.Win32.Securityshield.ek!c (v) Trojan
2.00%
6
 Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 Trojan
1.72%
7
 INF.Autorun (v) Trojan
1.66%
8
 Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) Worm
1.48%
9
 Pinball Corporation (v) Adware
1.19%
10
 Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) PDF exploit
0.83%

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Google and Mozilla Fix Browser Flaws

Google and Mozilla Fix Browser Flaws

Google and Mozilla Fix Browser Flaws

Google and Mozilla have released new versions of their browsers, plugging plenty of security holes along the way.

Hundreds of bugs have been fixed in the Google Chrome update, after the company said it would be releasing a “new stable version” of the browser every six weeks.

So far Google has followed through with its promise and introduced the patches along with a new HTML5 parser and file API, among other features.

“Also, if you choose to block sites from setting any data in your browser’s content settings for cookies, you can now use a new dialog for managing blocked cookies in bulk,” noted Jeff Chang, product manager for Google Chrome, in a blog.

Google recently launched a security advice page offering some tips on how users can protect themselves from hackers.

Mozilla, meanwhile, has made Firefox versions 3.6.11 and 3.5.14 available for download, patching nine vulnerabilities along the way.

Five of the flaws were ranked as critical, meaning they could be exploited “to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing,” Mozilla explained.

“As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.11,” advised Firefox release manager Christian Legnitto.

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from » http://www.itpro.co.uk

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Ubuntu is More Secure Than Windows, According to Dell

Ubuntu is More Secure Than Windows, According to Dell

Ubuntu Safer Than Windows

C omputer maker Dell has been singing Ubuntu’s praises from the rooftops, saying its smaller user numbers meant it wasn’t a target for online scammers.

Dell, the world’s third biggest PC maker, has called into question Microsoft’s efforts to keep Windows users safe online by claiming Ubuntu offers more protection.

With Linux systems still struggling to gain public trust, particularly when it comes to online shopping, Dell has issued a statement of support for Ubuntu by revealing 10 reasons why PC users should opt for Canonical’s Linux instead of Windows when buying a new PC.

Number six in Dell’s list is the claim that “Ubuntu is safer than Microsoft Windows: The vast majority of viruses and spyware written by hackers are not designed to target and attack Linux.”

Among the other reasons mentioned are its fast boot-up speeds and elegant design, and that with Dell claiming Ubuntu is “social from the start”.

The company says anti-malware software is “unwarranted” on Ubuntu, but claims Windows’ on-board Defender and Security Essentials invariably need upgrading to get closer to the level of protection needed on Windows systems.

The argument Dell is using is a simple one: the popularity of Internet Explorer will always make it the number one target for security threats, while the massively smaller quality of Ubuntu users will largely be safe simply because because the numbers just aren’t there to make it worth their while.

Dell – whose PCs have been shipping with Ubuntu on-board since 2007 – insists the public had no reason to fear Linux just because it doesn’t look exactly like Windows.

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from » http://www.itpro.co.uk

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