Malvertisements creep back in over the weekend
Friday, September 25, 2009
A week after a high-profile malvertising incident affected users at the New York Times website, a similar scam cropped up on several other popular websites, including the Drudge Report, horoscope.com, lyrics.com, and slacker.com.
The malware in this case took the form of banner ads, which attempted to download an exploit-laced PDF file. If successful, the modified Alureon trojan embedded in the PDF file would download additional malware, in an attempt to make the affected users' PC into part of a botnet.
The attacks were made more difficult to detect than they otherwise might have been, due to the dynamic system the hackers used to generate the malicious PDF files. By adding code to some files and removing it from others, while preserving the central virus payload, the attackers were able to escape the attention of most virus protection programs.
Detection was further complicated by the attackers' use of dynamic virtual hosts for their malicious content, which have no set naming conventions and can be stopped and started at will. The hosts that served the harmful content in the weekend's attacks were shut down immediately thereafter.
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