Feb 11 2010

Spam, malware proliferate in late 2009

Category: Malware — DISC @ 2:16 pm

SPAM !
Image by colodio via Flickr

Alejandro MartĆ­nez-Cabrera

Online security firm Websense has released a report on the cyberthreat landscape during the second half of 2009, and some of the findings are jaw dropping:

The firm, which scans millions of Web sites and e-mails a day looking for malicious content, found that 95 percent of all user-generated content came laced with some kind of spam or malicious link.

“The notion that the Internet could be the great equalizer turned out to be true after all; unfortunately, it’s mostly making suckers out of all of us,” tech Web site Ars Technica said.

Also surprising: Remember last year when the New York Times said a page on its Web site had been sending malware through its ad network? That was the most high-profile example of how criminals have managed to infiltrate trusted Web sites through a tactic known as drive-by downloading, in which a Web user picks up a virus simply by visiting an infected page. According to Websense, 71 percent of all Web sites generating malware in the second half of 2009 were infected legitimate Web sites.

Echoing what other research has found, the report said the number of infected Web sites went through the roof last year. Websense estimated there was a 225 percent growth in the number of malicious sites in 2009 compared with the year before.

The problem declined slightly in the second half of the year, with the decrease attributed to criminals moving away from attacks on traditional Web sites and attempting to exploit social-networking sites.

Websense also found that 85.8 percent of all e-mails sent in the second half of 2009 were spam.

More surprising is that 81 percent of all e-mail sent during the same period had some kind of malicious link. That means there was a 4-in-5 chance that a link pasted into an e-mail would lead you to download an infected file or take you to an infected Web site. (You usually don’t see all of the junk mail because it’s often filtered by your e-mail provider, browser or antivirus software.)

Finally, Websense found that in the second half of 2009, it took security vendors an average 46 hours – almost two days – to repair damage by malware after it had been identified (compared with 22 hours in the first half of 2009).

“The idea that computer users are not protected for days at a time, or even weeks or a month, may be compared with leaving your laptop in a public space for three weeks and hoping it won’t be used or abused,” the report said.

On Feb 1oth this article appeared on page D1 of the SF Chronicle

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Tags: Antivirus software, E-mail, Malware, New York Times, Social network service, Spam, User-generated content, websense

Jan 12 2010

Pop-Up Security Warnings Pose Threats

Category: Malware — DISC @ 4:10 pm

FBI Warning
Image by Travelin’ Librarian via Flickr

Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

By FBI NPO

The FBI warned consumers today about an ongoing threat involving pop-up security messages that appear while they are on the Internet. The messages may contain a virus that could harm your computer, cause costly repairs or, even worse, lead to identity theft. The messages contain scareware, fake or rogue anti-virus software that looks authentic.

The message may display what appears to be a real-time, anti-virus scan of your hard drive. The scareware will show a list of reputable software icons; however, you canā€™t click a link to go to the real site to review or see recommendations. Cyber criminals use botnetsā€”collections of compromised computersā€”to push the software, and advertisements on websites deliver it. This is known as malicious advertising or ā€œmalvertising.ā€

Once the pop-up warning appears, it canā€™t be easily closed by clicking the ā€œcloseā€ or ā€œXā€ buttons. If you click the pop-up to purchase the software, a form to collect payment information for the bogus product launches. In some instances, the scareware can install malicious code onto your computer, whether you click the warning or not. This is more likely to happen if your computer has an account that has rights to install software.

Downloading the software could result in viruses, malicious software called Trojans, and/or keyloggersā€”hardware that records passwords and sensitive dataā€”being installed on your computer. Malicious software can cause costly damages for individual users and financial institutions. The FBI estimates scareware has cost victims more than $150 million.

Cyber criminals use easy-to-remember names and associate them with known applications. Beware of pop-up warnings that are a variation of recognized security software. You should research the exact name of the software being offered. Take precautions to ensure operating systems are updated and security software is current. If you receive these anti-virus pop-ups, close the browser or shut down your computer system. You should run a full anti-virus scan whenever the computer is turned back on.

If you have experienced the anti-virus pop-ups or a similar scam, notify the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) by filing a complaint at www.ic3.gov.

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Tags: anti virus, crime, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Identity Theft, Internet Crime Complaint Center, Malicious Software, Malware, pop-up, Security, Theft, trojan, United States

Dec 28 2009

Hackers’ attacks rise in volume, sophistication

Category: Information Security — DISC @ 6:41 pm

digital-hijack


Year in review for online security attacks ā€“ 2009 is going to be known as a year of change in tactics of exploitation, rather than creating more new tools in hackerā€™s community. They are utilizing social media as a tool to exploit and using built-in trust in social media to their advantage. Thatā€™s why stealing social media accounts are considered as a treasure trove in hackerā€™s community to spread malwares (rogue anti-virus) which helps them to steal personal and private information. This perhaps was another reason why social media community was busy in 2009 changing their security and privacy policy on a frequent basis. Do you think, as social media grow, so does the threat to personal and private information?.

At the same time 2009 comes to an end with a bang with an appointment of Howard Schmidt by Obamaā€™s administration as a cybersecurity coordinator. A great choice indeed but why it took them a whole year to make this important decision. This indecision will cost them, no matter how you look at it. Now hopefully the current administration is going to keep the politics aside and take his recommendations seriously to make up for the lost time.

Alejandro MartĆ­nez-Cabrera, SF Chronicle

Security experts describe the typical hacker of 2009 as more sophisticated, prolific and craftier than ever. If anything, criminals will be remembered by the sheer number of attacks they unleashed upon the Web.

While the year didn’t see many technological leaps in the techniques hackers employ, they continued to expand their reach to every corner of the Internet by leveraging social media, infiltrating trusted Web sites, and crafting more convincing and tailored scams.

Although there were a handful of firsts – like the first iPhone worm – most attacks in 2009 were near-identical to tactics used in prior years, changing only in the victims they targeted and their level of sophistication.

One of the most preoccupying trends was personalized attacks designed to steal small and medium business owners’ online banking credentials. The scheme was particularly damaging because banks take less responsibility for the monetary losses of businesses than of individual consumers in identity theft cases.

In October, the FBI estimated small and medium businesses have lost at least $40 million to cyber-crime since 2004.

Attacks continued to plague larger organizations. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the FBI was investigating the online theft of tens of millions of dollars from Citigroup, which has denied the incident.

Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, said criminals shifted the focus of their tactics from developing attack techniques to improving the social engineering of their scams.

“It’s not the tools but the skills. That’s a new idea,” he said.

One example is rogue antivirus schemes, which often trick computer users with a fake infection. Criminals then obtain their victims’ credit card information as they pay for a false product, all the while installing the very malicious software they were seeking to repel.

Even though these scams have been around for several years, they have become more a popular tactic among criminals because they pressure potential victims into making on-the-spot decisions.

“People have been told to look out for viruses and want to do the right thing. There’s security awareness now, but the criminals are taking advantage of their limited knowledge,” said Mike Dausin, a researcher with network security firm TippingPoint’s DVLabs.

Chester Wisniewski, senior adviser for software security firm Sophos, said social networks also continued to be an important target for attackers. Despite Facebook and Twitter’s efforts to beef up their security, it has become a common tactic for scammers to hijack Facebook accounts and post malicious links on the walls of the victim’s friends or distribute harmful content through tweets.

“We haven’t had this before – a place where all kinds of people go and dump their information, which makes it very valuable for criminals,” Wisniewski said. “It’s kind of a gold mine for identity thieves to get on people’s Facebook account.”

Using PDFs
Another common ploy was malicious software that piggybacked on common third-party applications like Adobe PDFs and Flash animations.

Although Adobe scrambled this year to improve its software update procedures and roll out patches more frequently, criminals have increasingly exploited the coding flaws in Adobe products in particular because of their ubiquity and the abundance of vulnerable old code, said Roel Schouwenberg, senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

By using ad networks or taking advantage of exploitable Web programming errors to insert malicious content, criminals cemented their presence in legitimate Web sites and made 2009, according to anti-malware firm Dasient, the year of the “drive-by download,” in which users only have to visit a compromised Web site to become infected.

An October report from the San Jose company estimated that 640,000 legitimate Web sites became infected in the third quarter of 2009, compared with 120,000 infected sites during the same period of 2008.

Damaging reputations
The trend was not only a security threat for consumers, but also stood to damage the reputation and traffic of the victimized Web sites. In September, a fake antivirus pop-up made its way into the New York Times’ Web site by infiltrating the company’s ad network.

Researchers also noted a high volume of attacks disguised as content related to popular news items – anything from Michael Jackson to the swine flu – to coax Web users into downloading malicious content. This closing year also saw a handful of notorious politically motivated online attacks, and the issue of national cybersecurity continued to gain prominence.

On Dec. 18, Twitter’s home page was defaced by hackers calling themselves the “Iranian Cyber Army,” although authorities said there was no evidence they were in fact connected to Iran. An August attack on a Georgian blogger also indirectly affected the popular microblogging site and brought it down for several hours.

In July, several U.S. and South Korean government Web sites went offline after being hit by a denial-of-service attack that South Korea has attributed to a North Korean ministry. U.S. defense officials revealed in April that hackers have stolen thousands of files on one of the military’s most advanced fighter aircrafts.

“Now it’s in the agenda of every government to pay attention to the cyberworld,” Schouwenberg said.

Security coordinator
On Tuesday, the White House announced the appointment of Howard A. Schmidt as the Obama administration’s new cybersecurity coordinator. Schmidt occupied a similar post under the Bush administration.

Even though crime continued to evolve into a more organized and compartmentalized operation this year, experts believe a new White House administration conscientious of threats and partnerships between law enforcement agencies and security firms offer encouraging signs for next year.

An example is the Conficker Work Group, an international industry coalition that joined to mitigate the spread of the Conficker worm. The group also collaborates with law enforcement agencies by providing them with forensic information.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen such partnership between countries. Typically it’s the Wild West and nobody is in charge of anything. Now it’s clear there’s a lot more international collaboration,” Dausin said.

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Tags: antivirus, cybersecurity coordinator, Denial-of-service attack, facebook, hacker, howard schmidt, Identity Theft, iPhone, Law enforcement agency, Malware, Michael Jackson, South Korea, Twitter

Dec 14 2009

Viruses That Leave Victims Red in the Facebook

Category: Malware — DISC @ 3:21 pm

5 Ways to Cultivate an Active Social Network
Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr

By BRAD STONE – NYTimes.com

It used to be that computer viruses attacked only your hard drive. Now they attack your dignity.

Malicious programs are rampaging through Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, spreading themselves by taking over peopleā€™s accounts and sending out messages to all of their friends and followers. The result is that people are inadvertently telling their co-workers and loved ones how to raise their I.Q.ā€™s or make money instantly, or urging them to watch an awesome new video in which they star.

ā€œI wonder what people are thinking of me right now?ā€ said Matt Marquess, an employee at a public relations firm in San Francisco whose Twitter account was recently hijacked, showering his followers with messages that appeared to offer a $500 gift card to Victoriaā€™s Secret.

Mr. Marquess was clueless about the offers until a professional acquaintance asked him about them via e-mail. Confused, he logged in to his account and noticed he had been promoting lingerie for five days.

ā€œNo one had said anything to me,ā€ he said. ā€œI thought, how long have I been Twittering about underwear?ā€

The humiliation sown by these attacks is just collateral damage. In most cases, the perpetrators are hoping to profit from the referral fees they get for directing people to sketchy e-commerce sites.

In other words, even the crooks are on social networks now ā€” because millions of tightly connected potential victims are just waiting for them there.

Often the victims lose control of their accounts after clicking on a link ā€œsentā€ by a friend. In other cases, the bad guys apparently scan for accounts with easily guessable passwords. (Mr. Marquess gamely concedes that his password at the time was ā€œabc123.ā€)

After discovering their accounts have been seized, victims typically renounce the unauthorized messages publicly, apologizing for inadvertently bombarding their friends. These messages ā€” one might call them Tweets of shame ā€” convey a distinct mix of guilt, regret and embarrassment.

ā€œI have been hacked; taking evasive maneuvers. Much apology, my friends,ā€ wrote Rocky Barbanica, a producer for Rackspace Hosting, an Internet storage firm, in one such note.

Mr. Barbanica sent that out last month after realizing he had sent messages to 250 Twitter followers with a link and the sentence, ā€œAre you in this picture?ā€ If they clicked, their Twitter accounts were similarly commandeered.

ā€œI took it personally, which I shouldnā€™t have, but thatā€™s the natural feeling. Itā€™s insulting,ā€ he said.

Earlier malicious programs could also cause a similar measure of embarrassment if they spread themselves through a personā€™s e-mail address book.

But those messages, traveling from computer to computer, were more likely to be stopped by antivirus or firewall software. On the Web, such measures offer little protection. (Although they are popularly referred to as viruses or worms, the new forms of Web-based malicious programs do not technically fall into those categories, as they are not self-contained programs.)

Getting tangled up in a virus on a social network is also more painfully, and instantaneously, public. ā€œOnce itā€™s delivered to everyone in three seconds, the cat is out of the bag,ā€ said Chet Wisniewski of Sophos, a Web security firm. ā€œWhen people got viruses on their computers, or fell for scams at home, they were generally the only ones that knew about it and they cleaned it up themselves. It wasnā€™t broadcast to the whole world.ā€

Social networks have become prime targets of such programsā€™ creators for good reason, security experts say. People implicitly trust the messages they receive from friends, and are inclined to overlook the fact that, say, their cousin from Ohio is extremely unlikely to have caught them on a hidden webcam.

Sophos says that 21 percent of Web users report that they have been a target of malicious programs on social networks. Kaspersky Labs, a Russian security firm, says that on some days, one in 500 links on Twitter point to bad sites that can infect an inadequately protected computer with typical viruses that jam hard drives. Kaspersky says many more links are purely spam, frequently leading to dating sites that pay referral fees for traffic.

A worm that spread around Facebook recently featured a photo of a sparsely dressed woman and offered a link to ā€œsee more.ā€ Adi Av, a computer developer in Ashkelon, Israel, encountered the image on the Facebook page of a friend he considered to be a reliable source of amusing Internet content.

A couple of clicks later, the image was posted on Mr. Avā€™s Facebook profile and sent to the ā€œnews feedā€ of his 350 friends.

ā€œItā€™s an honest mistake,ā€ he said. ā€œThe main embarrassment was from the possibility of other people getting into the same trouble from my profile page.ā€

Others confess to experiencing a more serious discomfiture.

ā€œYou feel like a total idiot,ā€ said Jodi Chapman, who last month unwisely clicked on a Twitter message from a fellow vegan, suggesting that she take an online intelligence test.

Ms. Chapman, who sells environmentally friendly gifts with her husband, uses her Twitter account to communicate with thousands of her companyā€™s customers. The hijacking ā€œfilled me with a sense of panic,ā€ she said. ā€œI was so worried that I had somehow tainted our company name by asking people to check their I.Q. scores.ā€

Social networking attacks do not spare the experts. Two weeks ago, Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research group, accidentally sent messages to dozens of his Twitter followers with a link and the line, ā€œHi, is this you? LOL.ā€ He said a few people actually clicked.

ā€œIā€™m worried that people will think I communicate this way,ā€ Mr. Rainie said. ā€œ ā€˜LOL,ā€™ as my children would tell you, is not the style that I want to engage the world with.ā€

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Tags: Antivirus software, Computer virus, facebook, Google, Kaspersky Lab, Malware, malware 2.0, Online Communities, San Francisco, Security, Social network, Social network service, Spyware, Twitter

Dec 04 2009

Five ways to lose your identity

Category: Identity Theft — DISC @ 2:42 pm

beconstructive12

By Jaikumar Vijayan
The rush by shoppers to the Web makes the season a great time for online retailers. It’s also a great time for hackers looking to steal data and money from the unwary millions expected to search for great deals online.

Checkout huge savings on Today’s Hot Deals on Information Security Solutions for the holidays

The growth of holiday hackers has annually prompted security analysts, identity theft awareness groups, and various government agencies to come up with lists of precautions that consumers can take to avoid becoming a victim of online fraud. Such lists can prove a benefit to consumers, but unfortunately some people ignore it.

Below are the identity theft awareness tips which can help maximize your exposure to online fraud.

Tip No. 1: Open all attachments from strangers and click on all embedded links in such e-mail messages. Such actions remain one of the most effective ways to provide thieves with personal information and financial data. All a hacker needs to do is find computer users who instinctively open e-mail messages from strangers, even those who write in a foreign language. The action can open the door to keystroke loggers, rootkits, or Trojan horse programs. Crooks can also easily install backdoors to easily steal data without attracting any attention. Once installed, hackers gain unfettered access to personal data and can even remotely control and administer systems from anywhere.

Tip No. 2: Respond to Dr. (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha, whose name is used by many hackers who say they have close friends and relatives in Nigeria who have recently been widowed or deposed in a military coup and need your help to get their millions of dollars out of the country. Users are told they will undoubtedly be rewarded for helping to get their “well-packed trunk boxes” full of cash out of Nigeria. And to make sure to provide bank account information, login credentials, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name so that they can wire the reward directly into a checking account in time for the holidays.

Tip No. 3: Install a peer-to-peer file-sharing client on your PC and configure it so all files, including bank account, Social Security, and credit card numbers, along with copies of mortgage and tax return documents, are easily available to anyone on the same P2P network. Your personal data will stream over the Internet while you check out what songs you can download for free without getting sued by the RIAA.

Tip No. 4: Come up with passwords that are easy to crack. It saves hackers from spending too much time and effort trying to access your PC. Clever sequences such as “123456” and “abcdef” and your firstname.lastname all make fine, easy-to-remember default passwords for you and for hackers. For maximum exposure, keep passwords short, don’t mix alphabets and numerals, and use the same password for all accounts.

Tip No. 5: Avoid installing the latest anti-malware tools and security updates. Keeping operating systems properly patched and anti-virus and anti-spyware tools updated make life hard for hackers. Users can help them out by making sure their anti-virus software and anti-spyware tools are at least 18 months out of date or by not using them at all. Either way, it’s very likely that your computer will be infected with a full spectrum of malware.

For additional tips on how to shop securely on Christmas and holidays season:
How to shop safely online this Christmas
Identity theft tip-off countermeasure and consequence | DISC

Please comment below regarding any other new and emerging threat which needs to be addressed during holidayā€™s season?

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Tags: antivirus, Christmas and holiday season, Computer security, Credit card, File sharing, hacker, Identity Theft, Malicious Software, Malware, Online shopping, Personal computer, Security, shop safely, shop securely, Spyware, threats, trojan, Trojan horse

Nov 30 2009

Hackers steal credit-card numbers from restaurant customers

Category: pci dss,Security Breach — DISC @ 2:44 am


Here we have another unnecessary credit card data breach in a small organization which resulted in a loss of customers data demonstrating poor baseline security of small organization in this case a restaurant. Small organizations are not ready for PCI Compliance. Checkout why PCI Compliance is essential and why small merchants have to comply. Review my threats page and evaluate your current business and system risks to make sure this does not happen to you.
Contact DISC for any question

By Theodore Decker
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Diners who frequent a popular Downtown restaurant should review their charge-card statements because hackers broke into its computer system to loot debit- and credit-card numbers, police said today.

Between 30 and 50 people have reported fraudulent charges on their accounts, and Columbus detectives said that anyone who used a charge card at Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails in July or August is at risk.

Detective Wyatt Wilson of the Columbus police fraud/forgery unit said police began linking reports of credit-card fraud in October. Cross-checking the victims’ accounts revealed Tip Top, which is on E. Gay Street, as a common denominator, he said.

The hackers have been traced to an overseas Internet address, and no Tip Top employees are involved, police said. Wilson said the business was as much a victim as its customers were.

The hackers found a weak point in the restaurant’s computer defenses, wormed their way in, and installed “malware” that stripped the numbers, he said.

The restaurant has fixed the problem, but customers who charged anything there in July or August should contact their credit-card companies or banks, cancel their cards and get new ones, even if they haven’t been victimized yet, police said.

New fraud reports have rolled in periodically until a few days ago, Wilson said, indicating that the card numbers are still in criminal circulation.

Elizabeth Lessner, the restaurant’s owner, said she has been told by investigators that the breach might have been the work of high-level hackers in Russia, and she wondered whether it was connected to a global case that surfaced this year.


Most of the small companies have trouble justifying their investments when it comes to security. At the same time PCI DSS for the ā€œbrick & mortarā€ merchants have been a blessing for security firms who sell hardware solutions to small merchants. The problem is these hardware point solution does not address the business issues of a small merchant on daily basis.
This is why small merchants need to build a security program and the in-house expertise with training and help of outside consultant to understand business issues related to information security clearly. You mature this process over time with an ongoing effort and full management support.
Do you think itā€™s time for small merchants to take information security seriously as a business limiting risk?

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Prevent and Protect from Credit Card Fraud and Scams

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS_jCET-YFA&feature=related

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Tags: Banking Services, Business, Credit card, crime, Financial services, fraud, hacker, Information Security, Malware, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, Point of sale, Police, Security

Nov 10 2009

Facebook, MySpace users hit by cyber attacks

Category: Cybercrime — DISC @ 1:27 am

facebook
Image by sitmonkeysupreme via Flickr

NZ HERALD reported that Facebook users – already being targeted in a malware campaign – are now under threat from a phishing scam.

Security specialists Symantec report that the company’s systems have picked up fake messages that appear to be sent by the social networking service.

Users will receive an email that looks like an official Facebook invite or a password reset confirmation.

If a duped user clicks on the ‘update’ button they will be redirected a fake Facebook site. They will then be asked to enter a password to complete the updating process.

As soon as the unwitting Facebook user does this, their password is in the hands of cybercriminals.

Dodgy subject lines for the phishing emails are: ‘Facebook account update,’ New login system’ or ‘Facebook update tool’.

The malware campaign that is still targeting Facebook is also propagated via email. This time, the message looks like a Facebook notification that the recipient’s password has been reset.

It includes a zip file that, if opened, launches an .exe file, which Symantec’s Security Response centre says is a net nasty called Trojan.Bredolab.

Once a users’ machine is infected by this malware, it secretly dials back to a Russian domain and, Symantec says, “is most likely becoming part of a Bredolab botnet.”

But it isn’t just Facebook that is being lined up by cybercriminals, News Corp’s MySpace is also under attack.

Potentially dangerous email subject lines to look out for are: ‘Myspace Password Reset Confirmation,’ ‘Myspace office on fire’ and ‘Myspace was ruined’.

Symantec believes their will be another attack on MySpace in the next day or two. “We also think that social networking sites with huge user bases are currently being targeted to infect maximum machines or gather passwords for more malicious activities in future,” the security team said in a statement.

It advised users to be extra-careful of suspicious attachments, especially those including password reset requests. Legitimate websites will not send an attachment for resetting a password, it said.

– NZ HERALD STAFF

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Tags: botnet, facebook, Malware, MySpace, News Corporation, phishing, Social network, Social network service, trojan, Website

Oct 16 2009

Web Services and Security

Category: Cloud computing,Information Security — DISC @ 4:01 pm

Cloud Security and Privacy

Because of financial incentive, malicious software threats are real and attackers are using the web to gain access to corporate data. Targeted malicious softwareā€™s are utilized to steal intellectual property and other confidential data, which is sold in the black market for financial gain. With use of social media in corporate arena, organizations need to have web services use policy, to ensure employees use the internet for business and comply with company web use policies. To have an effective web use policy makes business sense and to implement this policy efficiently is not only due diligence but also assist in compliance. After implementing, the key to the success of web use policy is to monitor the effectiveness of the policy on regular basis.

webservices

Hosted web security services operate at the internet level, intercepting viruses, spyware and other threats before they get anywhere near your network. These days if malicious software has infected your gateway node the attacker is home free and it is basically game over. How to fight this malice is to use hosted web security services, which is transparent to users and stop the malwares before they get to the corporate network.

Things to look at web security hosted services are protection, control, security, recovery and multilayer protection.

Protect your corporation from anti-virus, anti-spam, and anti-spyware
Content Control of images, URL filtering and enterprise instant messages, all web request are checked against the policy
Secure email with encryption
Archive email for recovery
Multilayer protection against known and unknown threats including mobile user protection

Web Security Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware – stops web-borne spyware and viruses before they infiltrate your network, protecting your business from information theft and costly diminished network performance.

Web Filtering – enables you to block access to unwanted websites by URL, allowing you to control Internet use and enforce acceptable Internet usage policies


Download a free guide for the following hosted solutions

Hosted email solution
Hosted email archiving
Hosted web monitoring
Hosted online backup

Tags: archive email, boundary encryption, content control, email archiving, email solution, image control, Malicious Software, Malware, multilayer protection, online backup, Spyware, url filtering, web filtering, web monitoring, wen security

Jan 06 2009

Digital frames and malware threat

Category: Malware — DISC @ 6:30 pm

Digital photo frame
No doubt, the digital frame is a hot state of the art technology item today. Some digital frames in the market carry a risk of infection through a Trojan horse (malware) which is capable of monitoring keystrokes and sending useful information back to its originator. In Jan 2008 there were multiple reports that digital picture frames attempted to install malware on devices connected to the frame. Itā€™s Jan 2009, and digital frames are still embedded with malwares.

According to SF chronicle article by Deborah Gage (Jan 2, 2009, pg. c1) ā€œThese popular devices are now so powerful that they’ve become computers in themselves, although people who buy them don’t always realize that. And like computers, the frames are capable of carrying code that logs keystrokes, steals data and calls out to other malicious code once it’s installed itself on a PC. ā€œ “Users don’t realize that bad guys can make use of each and every computer they can control, even if you don’t do Internet banking or have any sensitive information,” said Karel Obluk, the chief technology officer of AVG, a security vendor with offices in the United States and Europe. “They can profit by spam or other illegal activities and make (your) PC part of an illegal network. It’s something that users should always be reminded of.”

Consumers have to be wary of devices which have memory on-board.

December 29, 2008 (Computerworld) Amazon.com Inc. last week warned customers running Windows XP that a Samsung digital photo frame it sold until earlier this month might have come with malware on the driver installation CD. Amazon’s advisory identified the malware as “W32.Sality.AE,” the name assigned by Symantec Corp.

According to Samsung’s alert, “a batch of Photo Frame Driver CDs contains a worm virus in the Frame Manager software. This is a risk of the customers host PCs being infected with this worm virus.”
The Samsung SPF-85H is no longer available on Amazon.com.

“Samsung has issued an alert. … Our records indicate that you have purchased one of the digital photo frames through the Amazon.com website and are therefore affected by this alert,” said Amazon in the note.

Based on various security advisories — Only users running Windows XP are at risk from this virus or a Trojan, Samsung and Amazon said; Windows Vista is immune.

Some considerations to safeguard against Trojans:

ļ® Turn off autorun in Windows, to stop Trojan and malware exploits from installing itself on your system.
ļ® To find a Trojan on your system, configure Windows to show hidden files.
ļ® Utilize antivirus software which look for Trojans and keep it turned on and up-to-date. Scan new devices for malware upon connection to a system.
ļ® Perform application vulnerability assessment on digital frame which will look for hidden Trojans.
ļ® Perform regular assessment to find new vulnerabilities
ļ® Buy photo frames manufactured by vendors who can guarantee exclusion of malwares.
ļ® Do your due diligence to find out for known vulnerabilities before buying a digital frame

Who should be responsible for to make sure digital frames are malware free or perhaps both? (consumer/vendors)

AP Impact: Viruses Hit Digital Photo Frames, GPS
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R19VKUyeXag

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Tags: amazon, anti botnet, anti trojan, anti virus, anti worm, illegal network, infection, Malware, photo frame, samsung, Trojan horse

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