Year: 2009

Stalkdaily worm strikes Twitter — Brings down the House!!

Paul

twitter-stalkdaily

According to Techcrunch, this seems to of happened today where this worm has brought down twitter. I have been using the Twitter Client Tweetdeck and have not had any problems like they have had with this site. I wouldn’t visit the site in question because you would most likely get the worm. It seems to be a very good hack it sends out spam on your twitter account like this:

stalkdaily1

[ad#cricket-right-ez]If you have been infected twitter is suggesting you password reset and requesting a new password. Some other removal information can be found here. I will update as necessary when I find out more.

*Update a Few hours*
It looks like Twitter had a Cross Site Scripting going on, and it wasn’t really Stalkdaily who did it rather someone injected code into twitter to grab peoples browser Cache. See this post for more information.

According to watch I am seeing Stalkdaily is now safe to surf to as long as you don’t click on links on twitter just yet. I have found that if you make sure you aren’t logged into twitter in your browser you are much better at preventing this type of attacks. You can see the screenshot of stalkdaily website and it looks like they are an innocent party.

stalkdaily2

Online Episodes helps Adware Installer Zango

Paul

I was surfing the web hoping that Mythbusters would start putting there episodes online and I the first link that I get a website that looks like this:

mythbusterzangosite

This site even has the Theme music playing as if it was affiliated with Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters show.   If you look at the screen shot above you will see who someone has been keeping this site updated with the most current episodes of Mythbusters.   So I check out The Season 7 Episode 1 – Demolition Derby Special and I was curious as to what would happened if I clicked that link, and this screen pops up:

mythzango1

So I have to install this Zango Software to view this show?  So I find out go doing my research about Zango and Wikipedia says:
Zango, formerly ePIPO, 180solutions and Hotbar, produces software that provides access to partners’ games and DRM-restricted videos and software. Zango software is listed as adware by Symantec.[1] McAfee states, “this program may have legitimate uses”, but describes it as a “potentially unwanted program”, and an “adware downloader”

[Via Wikipedia]

I didn’t like the sound of this but I wanted to see what my AVG would say when I downloaded this software, and it pops up with:

zangowindowsdef

[ad#cricket-right-ez]Windows Defender comes back with Win32/Zangosearchassistant warning,  and thus I go around checking out this adware out around Google and I am seeing reports after reports on asking how to get rid of this Adware.  Some of the ones that I think would help people get rid of this program is:

If you haven’t installed [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]anti-virus or Firewalls[/intlink] this would be the first thing to do.   I’ve also read some reports about Zango that are quite disturbing like these:

Although these are just a few examples of what I found out just Googling Zango, I thought I would share these with you.  There are more examples like Zango’s Facebook Widget that I will say acts like adware and encourages you to send to 5 different users.  Although Facebook as Stopped this widget, we all know that Spyware and Malware is being used on social networks and will be undoubtedly be more and more in the future.   Remember you’re the only one to prevent having a virus.

A side not, if you did  try to install this software you would need to be and Administrator and that also concerns me because the type of stuff they are claiming in the EULA is Browsers stuff which shouldn’t need Administrator rights or at least I am not going to give Adware that right.   Zango is being Classified as Adware and I am only reporting that the software is being clasfied as Adware, but Zango claims it not.   This is where the End Users decide if it is or not, I however think it is!! I am also sure there are other sites like this that are trying to get you to install this software to view movies, and shows. Your best bet is to not install the software and go to Hulu or Fancast to find safe movies and shows.

Conficker Gets a new Look : Spyware Protector 2009

Paul3 Replies

Looks like the Conficker Worm has changed directions according to Viruslist:

One of the files is a rogue antivirus app, which we detect as FraudTool.Win32.SpywareProtect2009.s. The first version of Kido, detected back in November 2008, also downloaded fake antivirus to the infected machine. And once again, six months later, we’ve got unknown cybercriminals using the same trick.

The rogue software, SpywareProtect2009, can be found on spy-protect-2009.com., spywrprotect-2009.com, spywareprotector-2009.com.

[See Pictures of website at Viruslist.com]

[ad#cricket-right-ez]From my understanding of this worm, it seems to be trying to [intlink id=”3114″ type=”post”]scareware tactic[/intlink] trying to get you to pay $49.95 to remove these threats. F-secure has also seen this worm and thinks this is doing what the Waldec virus is doing by becoming a spambot. According to Eset, the botnet is larger than most and this could create a problem in the future.  It seems that it used the p2p to distribute this update so they could bypass the domain blocks that were in place.

I will tell you this, if you get the warnings you are infected by all means go to my [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Malware resource page[/intlink] and do a scan from the trusted sources.   I will update as I get more information on this little development.

Microsoft released April Patch list for Patch Tuesday

Paul

aprilpatchtue

To see what systems are affected please see the bulletin for further details.   Some of the updates have to do with IE 6 and IE 7, maybe it is time to update to IE 8.  It looks like if you update to IE 8 you will not have to worry about the Remote Code Execution.  There also seems to be a remote code execution for DirectX 9.0A, B, and C.  This however doesn’t affect DirectX 10 and if you have a Vista machine please consider updating to DirectX 10.

[ad#cricket-right-ez]

The other one is a MSDTC program that has a vulnerability of Elevation of Privileges that needs to be fixed.  There will of course be more than this for April but these are the ones that Microsoft has determined to be release for Tuesday.  There are going to be at least 8 Different patches for Windows XP, and some For Vista.  Some will be only for XP and others will be for XP and Vista.

Then Microsoft Internet Security andAcceleration server will have an update to prevent a Denial of Service attack.  This will be needed to patch on the server side as soon as possible.  Then there is the Excel Remote Code execution that needs to be fixed.  It looks like CVE-2009-0238 is the one that this is being patched for but this is only a guess.

Now is the best time to get [intlink id=”2883″ type=”post”]Autopatcher[/intlink] ready for this update because this will be quite a big update.  You should also update your [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]anti-virus software and Firewall[/intlink].

Electric Company fear Mongering gone wrong!!

Paul

I saw this talking going on at Arstechnica and SANS Interenet are Talking about the Elecric Company Fear mongering. Here’s what Ars Says:

It sounds like something straight out of Hollywood. Current and former US security officials have reported that foreign nations have penetrated the cybersecurity barriers surrounding the US electrical grid, water system, and even financial networks. Although no known attempts have been made to activate the booby traps said black hats left behind, such sleeper cells could activate suddenly during a war or crisis, plunging the nation into a disaster only Bruce Willis and that Mac dude could avert.

[Via Arstechnica]

[ad#cricket-right-ez]This was posted today with people asking the question Is the Electric company have a viruses or have a worm? I don’t know but these fears are coming from the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON — Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

[Via Wall Street Journal]

Now let’s talk about this, This is being a talked about on a friends Podcast, The Caffination Podcast. This is where I have figure we should talk about this. I think Sans Internet Storm says it better than I could:

One email stated that The power systems we have in place today are ran by Knobs and Switches. Mostly built int he 70’s and 80’s, these power stations are mostly ran by manual intervention. The power stations that _have_ been stood up since then, a couple of Nuclear Power stations, are federally regulated to not have any connections to anything, let alone the Internet.

Since this particular email comes from a very trusted source, I am inclinded to believe this person. Is it possible that there ARE computers in power stations that are connected to the Internet? Yes, I am quite sure there are. However, is it possible that the computer or computers (if there are any) that actually CONTROL the power are connected to the internet, I tend to not believe that.

[Via Sans Internet Storm]

I agree with what Sans is saying but I don’t think there is anything to worry about, for the fact that I think that the computers that control electricity are not hard wired to be online. This is meaning that if someone virus or worm gets on those computers there is no way these viruses or worms could talk back to command and control. This is my Theory and I don’t work from the electric but I do think this is the most plausible way they are preventing this type of attack. The First Tier, just like tech support, is for Corporate and technicians to talk to eat other over the intranet. The 2nd Tier, this is the important computers that would control Electric process. I don’t know this for sure but I think the 2nd tier would be used to isolate the computers from being accessed externally. Like I said before I don’t work for the electric company and this is all theory on how the electric has this set up!! So you can take it with a grain of salt or come up with your own ideas.