<![CDATA[[SecurityRatty] tag: iframes]]> http://securityratty.com/tag/iframes Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:53:50 +0000 iRatty Engine http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Compromised Cpanel Accounts For Sale]]> http://securityratty.com/article/6228ebb081126296ff70b5f6268fd2a3 http://securityratty.com/article/6228ebb081126296ff70b5f6268fd2a3
Is the once popular in the second quarter of 2007, embedded malware tactic on the verge of irrelevance, and if so, what has contributed to its decline? Have SQL injections executed through botnets turned into the most efficient way to infect hundreds of thousands of legitimate web sites? Depends on who you're dealing with.

A cyber criminal's position in the "underground food chain" can be easily tracked down on the basis of tools and tactics that he's taking advantage of, in fact, some would on purposely misinform on what their actual capabilities are in order not to attract too much attention to their real ones, consisting of high-profile compromises at hundreds of high-profile web sites.

Embedded malware may not be as hot as it used to be in the last quarter of 2007, but thanks to the oversupply of stolen accounting data, certain individuals within the underground ecosystem seem to be abusing entire portfolios of domains on the basis of purchasing access to the compromised accounts. In fact, the oversupply of compromised Cpanel accounts is logically resulting in their decreasing price, with the sellers differentiating their propositions, and charging premium prices based on the site's page ranks and traffic, measured through publicly available services, or through the internal statistics.


SQL injections may be the tactic of choice for the time being, but as long as stolen accounting data consisting of Cpanel logins, and web shells access to misconfigured web servers remain desired underground goods, goold old fashioned embedded malware will continue taking place.

Interestingly, from an economic perspective, the way the seller markets his goods, can greatly influence the way they get abused given he continues offering after-sale services and support. It's blackhat search engine optimization I have in mind, sometimes the tactic of choice especially given its high liquidity in respect to monetizing the compromised access.

The bottom line - for the time being, there's a higher probability that your web properties will get SQL injected, than IFRAME-ed, as it used to be half a year ago, and that's because what used to be a situation where malicious parties would aim at launching a targeted attack at high profile site and abuse the huge traffic it receives, is today's pragmatic reality where a couple of hundred low profile web sites can in fact return more traffic to the cyber criminals, and greatly extend the lifecycle of their campaign taking advantage of the fact the the low profile site owners would remain infected and vulnerable for months to come.

Related posts:
Embedding Malicious IFRAMEs Through Stolen FTP Accounts
Injecting IFRAMEs by Abusing Input Validation
Money Mule Recruiters use ASProx's Fast-flux Services
Malware Domains Used in the SQL Injection Attacks
Obfuscating Fast-fluxed SQL Injected Domains
SQL Injecting Malicious Doorways to Serve Malware
Yet Another Massive SQL Injection Spotted in the Wild
Malware Domains Used in the SQL Injection Attacks
SQL Injection Through Search Engines Reconnaissance
Google Hacking for Vulnerabilities
Fast-Fluxing SQL injection attacks executed from the Asprox botnet
Sony PlayStation's site SQL injected, redirecting to rogue security software
Redmond Magazine Successfully SQL Injected by Chinese Hacktivists
]]> Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:42:50 +0000 sql sql injections sql injection attacks massive sql injection profile site site site sql sql injection tactic Compromised Cpanel Accounts For Sale <![CDATA[Fake Celebrity Video Sites Serving Malware]]> http://securityratty.com/article/e6b6b6bb079e0140b924b302a0f75bb8 http://securityratty.com/article/e6b6b6bb079e0140b924b302a0f75bb8 With blackhat search engine optimization tactics clearly converging with social engineering, the result of which is the increasing supply of Zlob malware variants served as fake codecs, it's about time we spill some coffee on several campaigns in order to get a better understanding of the way the campaigns function.

These campaigns are also starting to get so sophisticated, that analyzing a single one will expose another massive SQL injection, reveal several blackhat SEO domain farms, let you obtain fresh Zlob malware variants, and point you to the very latest and undetected rogue software if you manage to expose the entire scammy ecosystem through all the redirections put in place to make it harder to get to the bottom of it.

What's important to keep in mind when assessing and shutting down such comprehensive campaigns is that on the majority of occassions the front end domains as well as the secondary ones are all attempting to download the codecs from hardcoded locations. Consequently, you have 50 front end domains and another 50 as secondary redirection points all attempting to download the codecs from 3 download locations. Once again, the malware authors efficiency centered mentality emphasising on the easy of management for the campaign is making it possible to.

Here's are some currently active fake celebrity video sites serving malware including the codec redirectors :

stillnaked.net
funkytube.net
starvid.info
yetmorefun.net
hotnudity.net
alreadynude.com
celebvids.info
sexystar.name
hotserved.net
thestars2008.com
nudde.net
gottabigfuick.com
moviecity.se
gossip-starz.com
tmz-video.com
js0.info
superfakamyvideo.com
hdavidz.com
blog-x.in
tmz-video.com
newhotpeople.com
dirty-gossips.com
flaxxvid.com
videoid.info
realvideofree.com
yetmorefun.net
popvids.info
ihavewetfuckpussy.com
virus-scanonline.com
adultx2008.com
lux-software2008.com

As well as some sample subdomains for traffic acquisition purposes, since all of these have already been crawled by search engines :

jodie.popvids.info
jessica.popvids.info
tila.popvids.info
paris.celebvids.info
vanessa.celebvids.info
britney.nudde.net
paris.nudde.net
kardashian.nudde.net
vanessahudgens.yetmorefun.net
lindsaylohan.yetmorefun.net
britneyspears.yetmorefun.net
parishilton.yetmorefun.net
kardashian.nudde.net

We also have embedded IFRAMEs and as well as injected ones into vulnerable sites, acting as redirectors to some of these fake video sites. For instance, at the pedophilesexstories.blog.com we have an injected redirector - js0.info/?s=16&k=pedophile+sex+stories&c=5 and js0.info itself is a blackhat SEO operation that's aggregating generic search traffic like this :

js0.info/16/5/ragnarok+hentai
js0.info/15/4/antivirus+characteristic
js0.info/16/5/msn+monkey
js0.info/15/4/airplus+internet+security

Once accessed, you get redirected to through two separate redirection campaigns at searchaw.info/sa/in.cgi?16; and hmel.info/stds13/go.php, until you finally get to the codecs.

With blackhat SEO-ers already well developed inventory of topical junk content, and experience in what's popular content and what's not, the entry barriers for malware authors into the traffic acquisition joys of blackhat SEO has never lower.
]]> Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:58:44 +0000 malware blackhat seo-ers blackhat seo net malware authors malware authors efficiency blackhat seo operation info blackhat Fake Celebrity Video Sites Serving Malware <![CDATA[iFrame attacks surge, security firm says]]> http://securityratty.com/article/77dd66c876a5402ab18052ca22159970 http://securityratty.com/article/77dd66c876a5402ab18052ca22159970 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:00:00 +0000 web pages sql injection attacks network managers malicious iframes panda security flood iFrame attacks surge, security firm says <![CDATA[The United Nations Serving Malware]]> http://securityratty.com/article/d1d822ed6374f6c7f294fed616ac7d76 http://securityratty.com/article/d1d822ed6374f6c7f294fed616ac7d76 Yet another massive SQL injection attack is making its rounds online, and this time without the SEO poisoning as an attack tactic, has managed to successfully infect the United Nations events page, which is now also marked as malware infected page, and with a reason since both the malicious URl and the injection are still active. According to WebSense :

"This mass injection is remarkably similar to the attack we saw earlier this month. When a user browses to a compromised site, the injected JavaScript loads a file named 1.js which is hosted on http://www.nihao[removed].com The JavaScript code then redirects the user to 1.htm (also hosted on the same server). Once loaded, the file attempts 8 different exploits (the attack last April utilised 12). The exploits target Microsoft applications, specifically browsers not patched against the VML exploit MS07-004 as well as other applications. Ominously files named McAfee.htm and Yahoo.php are also called by 1.htm but are no longer active at the time of writing. There are further similarities too between the two mass attacks. Resident on the latest malicious domain is a tool used in the execution of the attack. An analysis of that tool can be found in the ISC diary entry here. Mentioned in that diary entry is http://www.2117[removed].net. Our blog on that attack can be found here. It appears that same tool was used to orchestrate this attack too. "

Let's assess the malicious injection. nihaorr1.com/ 1.js (219.153.46.28) is attempting to load nihaorr1.com/ 1.htm, where several other internal exploit serving URLs and javascript obfuscations load through IFRAMES, such as :

nihaorr1.com/ Real.gif
nihaorr1.com/ Yahoo.php
nihaorr1.com/ cuteqq.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Ms07055.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Ms07033.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Ms07018.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Ms07004.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Ajax.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Ms06014.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Bfyy.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Lz.htm
nihaorr1.com/ Pps.htm
nihaorr1.com/ XunLei.htm

and finally serve the malware, by also taking us out of the point and loading another malicious IFRAME farm at gg.haoliuliang.net/one/ hao8.htm?036 (222.73.44.162) :

Scanners Result: 18/32 (56.25%) :
W32/PWStealer1!Generic; PWS:Win32/Lineage.WI.dr
File size: 24667 bytes
MD5...: 4b913be127d648373e511974351ff04e
SHA1..: 0ab703c93e3ad7c03d1aae5ea394d7db3b89bfd2

Another internal IFRAME serving exploits is also loading at haoliuliang.net, gg.haoliuliang.net/wmwm/ new.htm where a new piece of malware is served :

Scanners Result: 26/32 (81.25%)
Trojan-PSW.Win32.OnLineGames.ppu; Trojan.PSW.Win32.OnlineGames.GEN
File size: 7205 bytes
MD5...: af05c777700b338f428463e56f316a05
SHA1..: bd68f621ec6c9796afa8b766c6cf4167afbd4703

As it appears, everyone's a victim of web application vulnerabilities discovered automatically, and either filtered based on high-page rank, or trying to take advantage of the long-tail of SQL injected sites to compensate for the lack of vulnerable high profile sites.

Related posts:
UNICEF Too IFRAME Injected and SEO Poisoned
Embedded Malware at Bloggies Awards Site
Embedding Malicious IFRAMEs Through Stolen FTP Accounts
Yet Another Massive Embedded Malware Attack
MDAC ActiveX Code Execution Exploit Still in the Wild
Malware Serving Exploits Embedded Sites as Usual
Massive RealPlayer Exploit Embedded Attack
Syrian Embassy in London Serving Malware
Bank of India Serving Malware
U.S Consulate St. Petersburg Serving Malware
The Dutch Embassy in Moscow Serving Malware
U.K's FETA Serving Malware
Anti-Malware Vendor's Site Serving Malware
The New Media Malware Gang - Part Three
The New Media Malware Gang - Part Two
The New Media Malware Gang
A Portfolio of Malware Embedded Magazines
Another Massive Embedded Malware Attack
I See Alive IFRAMEs Everywhere
I See Alive IFRAMEs Everywhere - Part Two
]]> Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:13:00 +0000 malware attack malware attack anti-malware vendor media malware gang htm nihaorr1 load nihaorr1 attack tactic The United Nations Serving Malware <![CDATA[Phishing Tactics Evolving]]> http://securityratty.com/article/30ee59a46d8acb7f8fa8466791f3491d http://securityratty.com/article/30ee59a46d8acb7f8fa8466791f3491d Malware authors, phishers and spammers have been actively consolidating for the past couple of years, and until they figure out to to vertically integrate and limit the participation of other parties in their activities, this development will continue to remain so. Malware infected hosts are not getting used as stepping stones these days, for OSINT or cyber espionage purposes, but also, for sending and hosting phishing pages, a tactic in which I'm seeing an increased interest as of recently. Here are some example of recently spammed phishing campaigns hosting the phishing pages on end user's PCs :

- pool-71-116-244-232.lsanca.dsl-w.verizon.net
- user-142o3ds.cable.mindspring.com/online.lloydstsb.co.uk/customer.ibc/logon.html
- user-142o3ds.cable.mindspring.com/onlineid/cgi-bin/onlineid.bankofamerica/sso.login.controller
- user-142o3ds.cable.mindspring.com/halifax-online.co.uk/_mem_bin/halifax_LogIn/formslogin.aspsource=halifaxcouk
- stolnick-8marta-8b-r1-c1-45.ekb.unitline.ru/halifax-online.co.uk/_mem_bin
- zux006-052-125.adsl.green.ch/onlineid/cgi-bin/onlineid.bankofamerica/sso.login.controller
- rrcs-74-218-5-6.central.biz.rr.com/webview/files//onlineid/cgi-bin/onlineid.bankofamerica/sso.login.controller
- user-0c93qog.cable.mindspring.com/onlineid/cgi-bin/onlineid.bankofamerica/sso.login.controller

The second tactic that I've been researching for a while is that of remotely SQL injecting or remotely file including phishing pages on vulnerable sites, as for instance, someone's actively abusing vulnerable sites, which are apparently noticing this malicious activities and taking care of their web application vulnerabilities. Some recent examples include :

- kclmc.org/components/www.halifax.co.uk/_mem_bin/FormsLogin.aspsource=halifaxcouk/Index.PHP
- citrusfsc.org/templates_c/www.halifax-online.co.uk/_mem_bin/halifax_LogIn/formslogin.aspsource=halifaxcouk/index.html
- agentur-schneckenreither.com/administrator/components/com_joomfish/help/www.halifax.co.uk/_mem_bin/formslogin.asp/index.php
- dziswesele.pl/media/www.halifax.co.uk/_mem_bin/formslogin.asp/

In November, 2007, I started making the connecting between a Turkish defacement group that wasn't just defacing the web sites it was coming across, but was also hosting malware on the vulnerable sites :

"It gets even more interesting, as it appears that a Turkish defacer like the ones I blogged about yesterday is somehow connected with the group behind the recent Possibility Media's Attack, and the Syrian Embassy Hack as some of his IFRAMES are using the exact urls in the previous attacks."

As of recently, I'm starting to see more such activity, with various defacing groups realizing that monetizing their defacements can indeed improve their revenue streams. For instance, findaswap.co.uk/administrator/components/com_extplorer/www.Halifax.co.uk/_mem_bin/formslogin.asp/was serving a phishing page, and was also recently hacked by a Turkish defacement group. Moreover, equidi.com which is currently defaced is also hosting the following phishing pages within its directory structure, namely, equidi.com/New2008/Orange; equidi.com/New2008/www.bankofamerica.com; equidi.com/New2008/www.halifax.co.uk

Why are all of these tactics so smart? Mainly because they forward the responsibility to the infected party, and I can reasonably argue that a phishing page hosted at a .biz or .info tld will get shut down faster than the one hosted at a home user's PC. As for the SQL injections, the RFI, and the consolidation between defacers and phishers if it's not defacers actually phishing for themselves, what we might witness anytime now is a vulnerable financial institutions web sites' hosting phishing page, or its web application vulnerabilities used against itself in a social engineering attempt.
]]> Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:18:17 +0000 halifax-online halifax mem binformslogin user user-142o3ds web application vulnerabilities mem binhalifax loginformslogin vulnerable sites turkish defacement Phishing Tactics Evolving <![CDATA[UNICEF Too IFRAME Injected and SEO Poisoned]]> http://securityratty.com/article/452a90ccfc35d6ad6a998c60113508e2 http://securityratty.com/article/452a90ccfc35d6ad6a998c60113508e2 The very latest, and hopefully very last, high profile site to successfully participate in the recently exposed massive SEO poisoning, is UNICEF's official site. In fact the campaign is so successful, where successful means that each and every poisoned result loads the injected IFRAME using UNICEF.org as a doorway to pharmaceutical spam and scams, that one of the most prolific domains within the IFRAMES (highjar.info) is already returning "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded. The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later" messages.

This is the perfect moment to point out that as of yesterday's afternoon the search engines that were indexing the SEO poisoned pages have implemented filters so that the malicious pages no longer appear in their indexes, thereby undermining the critical success factor for this campaign - hijacking search traffic. Case closed? At least for now, and even though the black hat SEO is taken care of the last time I checked, some of the sites originally mentioned, and many others still need to take care of the web application vulnerabilities.

Tracking this campaign in a detailed manner inevitably results in a quality actionable intelligence data, in between the added value out of the historical preservation of evidence. The malicious parties behind this know what they're doing, they've been doing it in the past, and will continue doing it, therefore it's extremely important to document what was going on at a particular moment in time. It's all a matter of perspective, some care about the type of vulnerability exploited, others care who's hosting the rogue security applications and the malware, others want to establish the RBN connection, and others want to know who's behind this. Virtual situational awareness through CYBERINT is what I care about.

Let's close the case by assessing UNICEF.org's IFRAME injection state as of yesterday's afternoon. What is highjar.info/error (75.127.104.26) anyway? Before it felt the "UNICEF effect" in terms of traffic, it used to be a "Easy SEO | A Coaching Site For BEGINNING webmasters". And the last time it was active, the injected redirect was forwarding to ravepills.com/?TOPQUALITY (69.50.196.63) and RavePills is what looks like a "legal alternative to Ecstasy" :

"On the other hand, Rave is the safest option available to you without the fear of nasty side-effects or a long time in jail. Rave gives you the same buzz that the illegal ones do but without any proven side-effects. It's absolutely non-addictive & is legal to possess in every country. Rave gives you the freedom to carry it anywhere you go as it also comes in a mini-pack of 10 capsules."

IFRAMES injected within UNICEF.org :

highjar.info (75.127.104.26)
viagrabest.info (81.222.139.184)
pharmacytop.net (216.98.148.6)
grabest.info

Now that the entire campaign received the necessary attention and raised awareness on its impact, let's move onto the next one(s), shall we?
]]> Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:42:20 +0000 seo unicef easy seo site site owner iframe unicef effect massive seo campaign UNICEF Too IFRAME Injected and SEO Poisoned <![CDATA[Massive IFRAME SEO Poisoning Attack Continuing]]> http://securityratty.com/article/dbb7b773fec312a0398ecf8414bcf689 http://securityratty.com/article/dbb7b773fec312a0398ecf8414bcf689 Last week's massive IFRAME injection attack is slowly turning into a what looks like a large scale web application vulnerabilities audit of high profile sites. Following the timely news coverage, Symantec's rating for the attack as medium risk, StopBadware commenting on XP Antivirus 2008, and US-CERT issuing a warning about the incident, after another week of monitoring the campaign and the type of latest malware and sites targeted, the campaign is still up and running, poisoning what looks like over a million search queries with loadable IFRAMES, whose loading state entirely relies on the site's web application security practices - or the lack of.

What has changed since the last time? The number and importance of the sites has increased, Google is to what looks like filtering the search results despite that the malicious parties may have successfully injected the IFRAMEs already, thus trying to undermine the campaign, new malware and fake codecs are introduced under new domain names, and a couple of newly introduced domains within the IFRAMES themselves.

Keep it Simple Stupid for the sake efficiency is what makes the campaign relatively easy to track once you understand the importance of hot leads, and real-time assessments for the purpose of setting the foundation for someone else's upcoming piece of the puzzle in an OSINT manner. The main IPs within the IFRAMES acting as redirection points to the newly introduced rogue software and malware, remain the same, and are still active. The very latest high profile sites successfully injected with IFRAMES forwarding to the rogue security software and Zlob malware variants :

USAToday.com, ABCNews.com, News.com, Target.com, Packard Bell.com, Walmart.com, Rediff.com, MiamiHerald.com, Bloomingdales.com, PatentStorm.us, WebShots.com, Sears.com, Forbes.com, Ugo.com, Bartleby.com, Linkedwords.com, Circuitcity.com, Allwords.com, Blogdigger.com, Epinions.com, Buyersindex.com, Jcpenney.com, Nakido.com, Uvm.edu, hobbes.nmsu.edu, jurist.law.pitt.edu, boisestate.edu.

Which are the main IPs injected as IFRAME redirection points?

72.232.39.252
NetRange: 72.232.0.0 - 72.233.127.255
CIDR: 72.232.0.0/16, 72.233.0.0/17
NetName: LAYERED-TECH-
NetHandle: NET-72-232-0-0-1
Parent: NET-72-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.LAYEREDTECH.COM
NameServer: NS2.LAYEREDTECH.COM
Comment: abuse@layeredtech.com

195.225.178.21
route: 195.225.176.0/22
descr: NETCATHOST (full block)
mnt-routes: WZNET-MNT
mnt-routes: NETCATHOST-MNT
origin: AS31159
notify: vs@netcathost.com
remarks: Abuse contacts: abuse@netcathost.com

89.149.243.201
inetnum: 89.149.241.0 - 89.149.244.255
netname: NETDIRECT-NET
remarks: INFRA-AW
admin-c: WW200-RIPE
tech-c: SR614-RIPE
changed: technik@netdirekt.de 20070619

89.149.220.85
inetnum: 89.149.220.0 - 89.149.221.255
netname: NETDIRECT-NET
remarks: INFRA-AW
admin-c: WW200-RIPE
tech-c: SR614-RIPE
changed: technik@netdirekt.de 20070619

Newly introduced malware serving domains upon loading the IFRAMES :

mynudedirect.com/3/5144 (216.255.186.107) loads mynudenetwork.com/flash2/?aff=5144 (85.255.120.203) which attempts to load mynudenetwork.com/load.php?aff=5144&saff=0&sid=3 where the malware is attempting to load upon accepting the ActiveX object :

Scanners Result: Result: 12/32 (37.5%)
Suspicious:W32/Malware!Gemini; W32/BHO.BVW
File size: 107536 bytes
MD5: e50f2c9874a128d4c15e72d26c78352c
SHA1: 91f8a0e2531ea63ce22d0c7f90e7366a78ebeb8a

Moreover gift-vip.net/images/index1.php (195.225.178.19) is still loading from the previous campaign, this time pointing to webmovies-b.com/movie/black/0/21/411/0/ (58.65.234.25), and of course, e.pepato.org/e/ads.php?b=3029 (58.65.238.59) :

Scanners Result: 2/32 (6.25%)
JS.Feebs.rv; JS/Feebs.gen2 @ MM
File size: 16098 bytes
MD5: 64bbd8ba8a0c9ce009d19f5b8c9d426e
SHA1: 1b313198ef140d2c74f36aa84c13afe9497865b6

We also have vipasotka.com/in.php?adv=5032&val=43c46ed2 (119.42.149.22) loading and redirecting to golnanosat.com/in.php?adv=5058&val=e32a412f (119.42.149.22)

Scanners Result : Result: 11/32 (34.38%)
Trojan.Crypt.AN; FraudTool.Win32.UltimateDefender.cm
File size: 61440 bytes
MD5: 5d83515199803e1fbcd3d2d8e0cd4ce5
SHA1: 4c1f0eba4be895cf3b018e41fa7f13523424874d

Last but not least is d08r.cn (203.174.83.55) a new domain introduced within the IFRAMES, which is also responding to, another scammy ecosystem :

07search.com
5m9h41.com
a666hosting.info
gzoe7w.com
l6q7x6.com
nashepivo.com
nbb3g1.com
sraly.com
uvilo.com
vmksxo.com
credits-counselor.com
hx0k21.com
mob-shop.net
smart-search.net

For the time being, Google is actively filtering the results, in fact removing the cached pages on number of domains when I last checked, the practice makes it both difficult to assess how many and which sites are actually affected, and of course, undermining the SEO poisoning, as without it the input validation and injecting the IFRAMEs would have never been able to attract traffic at the first place.

The attack is now continuing, starting two weeks ago, the main IPs behind the IFRAMES are still active, new pieces of malware and rogue software is introduced hosting for which is still courtesy of the RBN, and we're definitely going to see many other sites with high page ranks targeted by a single massive SEO poisoning in a combination with IFRAME injections. Which site is next? Let's hope not yours, as if you don't take care of your web application vulnerabilities, someone else will.

Related posts:
More High Profile Sites IFRAME Injected
More CNET Sites Under IFRAME Attack
ZDNet Asia and TorrentReactor IFRAME-ed
Rogue RBN Software Pushed Through Blackhat SEO
Massive RealPlayer Exploit Embedded Attack
Another Massive Embedded Malware Attack
Yet Another Massive Embedded Malware Attack
Massive Blackhat SEO Targeting Blogspot
Massive Online Games Malware Attack
]]> Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:12:29 +0000 massive single massive seo profile sites profile sites iframe attack seo malware malware attack massive blackhat seo Massive IFRAME SEO Poisoning Attack Continuing <![CDATA[PR Storm - Mass iFRAME Injectable Attacks]]> http://securityratty.com/article/92d7b090b1b3e9f2f2f1e98739f50ba1 http://securityratty.com/article/92d7b090b1b3e9f2f2f1e98739f50ba1 Here's some recent media coverage regarding the SEO poisoning attack through exploiting the ABC of web application security, namely input validation, a good example of tactical warfare combing two different attack tactics, blackhat SEO for traffic acquisition and abusing input validation for injecting iFRAMES, and abusing the sites' search engine optimization practices of storing the now input violated pages. Meanwhile, Iftach Amit at Finjan points out that as it looks like we were on the same page. Here's Google's comment regarding these incidents provided to Finjan :

"Google acknowledged that this was a known attack vector, and confirmed that they are indeed working on ways to manipulate and “sanitize” links provided by them in an effort to minimize the effect of incidents such as XSS on indexed sites. They also share our opinion on the reality of XSS and its affects on web browsing: "Google recommends that sites fix their cross-site scripting vulnerabilities as a priority. These can be abused in a number of ways, including bad interactions with search engines. Google is helping by reaching out to affected organizations. In addition, Google has internal processes to block abuses when the situation warrants."

The responsible full-disclosure, namely disclosing and every domain affected, the IPs of the malicious domains used in the redirection, and obtained a sampled result of where are the domains actually leading to, should have had the effect it's supposed to - raise awareness and put responsible pressure on the people involved in taking care of making sure no one can submit executable commands that will later on get cached, and load, such as iFRAMES in this case. Most of all, these are high page rank-ed sites, namely the junk that they submit is appearing within the first 10/20 search results and is getting crawled within hours upon submitting it, and therefore it must be taken care of as soon as possible, on multiple fronts.

- The Other iframe attack
- Optimizing Cross Site Scripting - and general security practices
- Follow up to yesterday's mass hack attack
- Hackers launch massive IFrame attack
- SEO poisoning attacks growing
- Attackers hijacking web site search engines to push malware; German article
- Developers: Check Your %*^& Inputs
- Researcher: Beware of massive IFrame attack

with many other such fake codecs about to get included in future campaigns, and emphasize on the dynamics of orchestrating such a malicious campaign, namely keep it as sophisticated and as deep-linking/deep-iframing as possible to confuse automated malware aggregation approaches at the beginning of the campaign, and Keep it Simple Stupid at the very end of the campaign.

Malicious economies of scale means an efficient and standardized attack approach, take Rock Phish for instance, but it also means an easy way to detect and mitigate certain threats. In this malicious campaing for instance, nearly all the bogus .info domains with several exceptions are operating within the same netblock, and continue doing so. And the exceptions? It's all a matter of perspective, whether or not you believe having a RBN hosted domain within the actual iFRAME, or the result of the iFRAME redirection in terms of importance.
]]> Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:54:21 +0000 massive iframe attack iframe attack attack attack vector attack tactics domains malicious domains malicious sites PR Storm - Mass iFRAME Injectable Attacks <![CDATA[Wired.com and History.com Getting RBN-ed]]> http://securityratty.com/article/43140f23637e75c4ac1b173b0948fe77 http://securityratty.com/article/43140f23637e75c4ac1b173b0948fe77 Monitoring last week's IFRAME injection attack at high page rank-ed sites, reveals a simple truth, that persistent simplicity seems to work. The attack is still ongoing, this time successfully injecting a multitude of new domains into Wired Magazine, and History.com's search engines, which are again caching anything submitted, particularly not validated input to have the malicious parties in the face of the RBN introducing a new malware, in between the pharmaceutical scams that they serve on the basis of an affiliation model. So, after "CNET stops IFRAME site attacks - who's next?" in terms of high-profile sites, that is Wired.com and History.com

Key summary points :

- the same malicious parties behind the CNET and TorrentReactor's IFRAME injection are also the ones behind Wired.com and History.com's abuse of input validation

- the IFRAME injection entirely relies on the lack of input validation within their search engines, making executable code possible to submit and therefore automatically execute upon accessing the cached page with a popular search query

- many other domains have been introduced within the IFRAMEs, a complete list of which you can find in this post, several directly hosted within RBN's network

- the main domain serving the heavily obfuscated VBS malware is located within the Russian Business Network's known netblocks

- given the high page ranks of the current and the previous targets, it is evident that the malicious parties are prioritizing based on the possibility to abuse input validation on high page rank-ed sites, presumably in an automated fashion

- Keep it Simple Stupid works, as since they cannot find a way to embedd the IFRAME at these hosts, a clear indicating of the fact that they've breached them, they figured out a way to inject the IFRAMEs and again take advantage of the high page ranks to attract traffic by gaining on popular key words, or any kind of key words that they want to

Sites currently affected next to Wired.com and History.com :
fhp.osd.mil
hcc.cc.gatech.edu
buffalo.edu
uninews.unimelb.edu.au
uvm.edu
jurist.law.pitt.edu
bushtorrent.com
torrentportal.com


Newly introduced domains within the IFRAMEs :
f3w.info (74.54.95.242)
chdjzn.info (75.125.181.78)
gmjett.info (75.125.181.89)
yscmps.info (75.125.181.124)
egkjnx.info (75.125.208.242)
qkecep.info (75.125.181.99)
qxdprq.info (75.125.181.113)
yscmps.info (75.125.181.124)
mqghrd.info (75.125.181.82)
yydcaj.info (75.125.181.122)
ecwrhk.info (75.125.181.86)
zdksgj.info (75.125.181.112)
stysqf.info (75.125.181.67)
egyffr.info (75.125.181.112)
prnprn.info (75.125.181.106)
fast-look.com (195.225.176.25)
fami4ka.net (217.20.127.217)
looseais.info (70.47.105.5)
my-ringtones.org (78.108.182.164)
eyzempills.com (81.222.139.184)
leohin.com (58.65.239.10)
is-t-h-e.com (69.50.167.165)
89.149.220.85

Where are the IFRAMEs relocating the visitor to?
search-vip.org/pharmacy/search.php?q= (195.225.178.19)
pharma-cist.com/item.php?id=156 (81.222.139.93)
vip-pharmacy.org (195.225.178.19)
adultfriendfinder.com/go/g665961
gift-vip.net/images/index1.php

Where's the malware?
The malware is loading from gift-vip.net/images/index1.php (195.225.178.19) where upon loading another IFRAME pointing to e.pepato.org/e/ads.php?b=3029 (58.65.238.59) which is using HostFresh proving hosting, dns services courtesy of INTERCAGE-NETWORK-GROUP, or the The Russian Business Network in all of its netblock diversity. It seems that pepato.org, currently hosted on one of RBN's netblocks, also made an appearance at malware embedded attack at a .gov site recently.

Scanner results : 3% Scanner(1/36) found malware!
File Size : 16643 byte
MD5 : 99eae1a189443c1a87681579cb4b5dbd
SHA1 : 89a04c4d06f51aa6d6cb54925a2c84d2bbdba06b
Arcavir - Trojan.HTML.JScript.Freebs.gen.9 under the JS:Feebs family; W32/Feebs-Fam ;JS.Feebs.Gen

Several more currently active internal pages serving variants :
e.pepato.org/e/ads.php?b=3029
e.pepato.org/e/ads_nl.php?b=1006
e.pepato.org/e/ads.php?b=1004
e.pepato.org/e/adsr.php?t=0
e.pepato.org/e/mdqt.php
e.pepato.org/e/e1004.html

Monitoring these connected incidents will continue, particularly the RBN connection, and other high profile sites' susceptibility to their attack methods.

Related embedded malware research :
Embedding Malicious IFRAMEs Through Stolen FTP Accounts
Yet Another Massive Embedded Malware Attack
MDAC ActiveX Code Execution Exploit Still in the Wild
Malware Serving Exploits Embedded Sites as Usual
Massive RealPlayer Exploit Embedded Attack
Syrian Embassy in London Serving Malware
Bank of India Serving Malware
U.S Consulate St. Petersburg Serving Malware
The Dutch Embassy in Moscow Serving Malware
U.K's FETA Serving Malware
Anti-Malware Vendor's Site Serving Malware
The New Media Malware Gang - Part Three
The New Media Malware Gang - Part Two
The New Media Malware Gang
A Portfolio of Malware Embedded Magazines
Another Massive Embedded Malware Attack
I See Alive IFRAMEs Everywhere
I See Alive IFRAMEs Everywhere - Part Two

Related RBN research :
RBN's Phishing Activities
RBN's Puppets Need Their Master
RBN's Fake Account Suspended Notices
A Diverse Portfolio of Fake Security Software
Go to Sleep, Go to Sleep my Little RBN
Exposing the Russian Business Network
Detecting the Blocking the Russian Business Network
Over 100 Malwares Hosted on a Single RBN IP
RBN's Fake Security Software
The Russian Business Network
]]> Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:20:33 +0000 malware vbs malware malware attack rbn media malware gang iframe injection attack iframe injection malware research high-profile sites Wired.com and History.com Getting RBN-ed <![CDATA[Injecting IFRAMEs by Abusing Input Validation]]> http://securityratty.com/article/6fb897029fee42d69194c86dc26613c0 http://securityratty.com/article/6fb897029fee42d69194c86dc26613c0 More news coverage follows regarding the now fixed, injection of IFRAMEs at high page rank-ed sites owned by CNET Networks, in fact Symantec's Internet Threat Meter monitor for web activities rated it medium risk, and urged extra caution :

"On March 4, 2008, reports of an IFRAME attack coming from ZDNet Asia began to surface. Attackers appear to have abused the ZDNet search engine's cache by exploiting a script-injection issue, which is then being cached in Google. Clicking the affected link in Google will cause the browser to be redirected to a malicious site that attempts to install a rogue ActiveX control. On March 6, 2008, the research that discovered the initial attack published an update stating that a number of CNET sites including TV.com, News.com, and MySimon.com are also affected by a similar issue."

At 19:45 (EET) all of the sites have their input validation checks applied so loadable IFRAMEs can no longer load or be accepted at all, despite that the injected pages are still indexed by search engines. A malicious campaign targeting high profile sites that went online and got taken care of for some 48 hours, that's good.

How was the IFRAME injection possible at the first place? OWASP lists input validation as one of the top 10 injection flaws for 2007, which in a combination with a site's SEO practice of caching pages with the injected input in the form of a keyword and the IFRAME, is what we've been seeing during the week :

"Input validation refers to the process of validating all the input to an application before using it. Input validation is absolutely critical to application security, and most application risks involve tainted input at some level. Many applications do not plan input validation, and leave it up to the individual developers. This is a recipe for disaster, as different developers will certainly all choose a different approach, and many will simply leave it out in the pursuit of more interesting development."

And since I've already established the RBN connection, it would be perhaps the perfect moment to demonstrate the abuse of input validation by injecting the Russian Business Network's Wikipedia entry in exactly the same fashion the malicious IFRAMEs were allowed to be injected at the first place. The bottom line - even with the input validation flaw accepting and loading the IFRAME, this attack wouldn't have been successful if it wasn't executed in a combination with the sites' keywords caching function.
]]> Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:53:50 +0000 input validation input validation checks plan input validation input input validation refers input validation flaw iframes iframe iframe attack Injecting IFRAMEs by Abusing Input Validation