Michael Jackson has been dead for a week already, but there are still a lot of speculations regarding his death. The spam runs are plenty as well — a Michael Jackson-related spam was seen bearing the subject Who killed Michael Jackson?, coming from a sender named x-files.

The spam message suggests that the icon was killed, and that information on who murdered him can be seen on the given URL.

Clicking the said link leads to a website, where the user is asked to execute a file, which supposedly contains secret information, in order to find out who killed Michael Jackson.

But of course, the executable is not at all related to Michael Jackson’s murderer, or to Michael Jackson at all, as the file is really an data-stealer detected by Trend Micro as TROJ_ZBOT.AXY. The Trojan TROJ_ZBOT.AXY connects to a certain URL where it downloads a configuration file containing a list of banking-related websites. Once the user attempts to visit any of the listed sites, a spoofed site is displayed instead of the real one, thus any critical information entered on the spoofed site will be sent to a remote user.

This threat however, doesn’t stand a chance against the Smart Protection Network as of its all components — spam, URL and file — are already either blocked or detected.

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Exactly three months ago, the whole IT sector was waiting with bated breath for April 1. The latest DOWNAD/Conficker variant–WORM_DOWNAD.KK–was poised to strike. We know that on that day, it would attempt to access 500 of 50,000 websites and download new malicious files. This led to fears–somewhat misplaced–that new, possibly damaging payloads could cause severe problems, not just for systems already affected by DOWNAD but the Internet as a whole. Many sectors assumed the worst.

April 1 came and went, and… nothing happened. Several days later, another variant appeared, but without the Internet ending (as some of the worst reporting would have led readers believe) most people believed that DOWNAD, as a major threat, was gone.

While it may no longer be as in the news at it was at its height, DOWNAD didn’t suddenly go away. Recent estimates from the Conficker Working Group place the number of unique IP addresses affected by the top 3 DOWNAD variants at well over 5 million. Even considering the group’s disclaimer of putting the number of actually infected systems at only 25-75% of that number, a minimum of 1.25 million infected systems is nothing to laugh at.

The Trend Micro World Virus Tracking Center (WTC) numbers bear this out as well. Almost 790,000 systems were found to be infected with DOWNAD variants in the first three months of the year. In the three succeeding months, that number was almost 1.9 million. Clearly, DOWNAD did not decide to quietly go away.

In addition, out of the public eye, DOWNAD went off and did something with all those infected systems: it went off and formed its own botnet. This was documented in mid-April by Advanced Threat Researchers Paul Ferguson and Ivan Macalintal. The short version, however, is simpler: DOWNAD was used to create a botnet. These can be used for the usual range of threats: spam, Denial of Service attacks, spreading FAKEAV malware, and so on.

Like it or not, malware threats are part of what users have to deal with day in, day out. Like anything people deal with regularly, people become used to malware threats. What was once noteworthy and unusual becomes dull and ordinary. However, this in fact does not make the threat any less dangerous. If anything, it can be argued that it makes the threat more dangerous, as users are more likely to be caught unaware of a threat that may not be something they’re looking out for.

In a very real way, threats like DOWNAD become part of the background noise that is a part of life on the Internet. While it may be unrealistic to expect individual users to keep in mind all threats, but good computing practices will help immensely. The most important one may be: keep your software up to date. This is particularly true for your operating system–a properly patched system would have been proof against most DOWNAD variants. Trend Micro users would have been protected via the Smart Protection Network, of course, but closing the underlying vulnerability would still have been essential.

The price of using your computer freely in today’s Internet may well be constant and unceasing vigilance.

On June 23, Jakob Nielsen posted an article declaring that password masking on the user interface is more harmful in terms of usability than helpful to the security of an application to which Bruce Schneier, in a June 26 blog post agreed. Both argued that masking the characters when a user enters a password is of little security value and may even be harmful to the usability of an application. I personally believe that displaying password entries in clear text has more detrimental implications to security than lowering the difficulty of shoulder surfing.

I readily agree that a seasoned criminal will focus his/her shoulder-surfing efforts on a user’s keyboard than on his/her screen. For an attacker with keyboard-side access, password masking has zero value anyway. However, I think Bruce underplayed the prevalence of possible daily shoulder-surfing activities such as providing IT support to a user, stopping by a colleague’s workstation to review a document, polishing a presentation while on an airplane, or turning on a computer for children who aren’t entitled to unsupervised access. It is also worth considering that there may be situations where it would be inappropriate to ask your current shoulder-buddy (the CEO or your grandmother, you choose) to look away while you enter a password.

There are some small security advantages that password masking does offer. For example, unskilled attackers will be looking at the screen when you start entering your password. By the time they realize their mistake, they will only see *** and have already missed a good portion of your password. (Hopefully, knowing the end of your password won’t help them decode the beginning.) Password masking also encourages frequent users of a service to memorize their passwords. I have many passwords that I could not tell you no matter how hard I tried. My fingers know them or I may know a mnemonic but the keystrokes are the only thing I retain. This is not as helpful for more casual users though.

My main objection to the demise of password masking is the message that it sends to casual users. We enter a case of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do. How can we ask our users to secure their password reminders if the entire password appears clear as day on the screen every time they enter it? Masking a password sends the message to the user that it is important that they not share their passwords, that they should not even show these to you, reinforcing the never-give-out-your-password tenet. In many cases, masking discourages copying and pasting passwords though only through naïveté (see here for a laugh).

The usability concern is indeed valid. The question becomes this, Where do we draw the line between security and usability? In my opinion, masking is a valid layer of security, though easily breached, it does raise barriers to entry even if only by a small margin. These barriers are also larger for the casual user. The more slowly a password is entered, the more time it would be on the screen, if unmasked. More importantly, it sends a firm message to users that their passwords should be protected.

Also, let’s not forget the principle of minimum astonishment—how many times would you have to use an application before you notice that your password is now being displayed on-screen in clear text? One possible compromise would be to provide a configuration option. However, this would not be friendly to a casual user who needs it most. I encourage application developers to seek out other usability accommodations (e.g., two-factor options, biometrics) before globally unmasking passwords.

Cybercriminals once again used the passing of Michael Jackson, the ‘King of Pop,’ a few days ago as an opportunity to go about with their malicious activities and attack innocent users.

We spotted an email (see Figure 1 below) about Michael Jackson’s death written in Spanish claiming to be from CNN Mexico.

Upon closer analysis (see Figure 2 above), we found that the sender of the email isn’t valid – info@hi5.com which is a spammed sender. The email also contained accurate information about Michael Jackson, buying itself credibility in order to lure users into clicking the links contained within the message.

The said email also contained a suspicious-looking link to an ‘exclusive CNN video’ about the event. Most of the other links on the spammed message were inaccessible and could not display the correct website. But one link—el sitio en internet TMZ (translated to English: ‘found in the TMZ website’)—which was a link to the site where the video is supposedly hosted but it redirects the user to another malicious site—http://{BLOCKED}.com/openbb/avatars/imagen/CNN/indexx.php. The threat in the said page is detected by Trend Micro as HTML_DLOADR.ARM.

This site does not contain anything but a black background and a message box telling the user that the Flash player version running on his/her system cannot play the said video. The message box contains three buttons (see Figure 3 above), clicking any of which will trigger the download of a malicious file—flash-installer-windows.exe—which claims to be the right Flash player version that will allow him/her to view the exclusive video. The said malicious file is detected as BKDR_IRCBOT.BW. BKDR_IRCBOT.BW connects to a certain IRC server and then joins an IRC channel where it waits for commands from a remote user.

Quite notable is that even if a user chooses the Cancel button, which should allow him/her to quit from downloading the file, the site will continue to push the download of the codec, leaving users with no choice but to deal with the malicious file downloaded into their system.

The spam message and malicious website used in this attack are already blocked by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network.

A new ransomware spreading through email is on the loose.

On the outset, the worm detected by Trend Micro as WORM_RANSOM.FD may look like a normal mass-mailing worm but further analysis reveals that this comes with a deadly payload. With only a few exceptions (files with .rwg, .dll, .exe, .ini, .vxd, and .drv extensions are not affected), it encrypts files in the affected system using the Blowfish algorithm, thereby rendering them unusable. A .RWG extension is then appended to the filenames to serve as a marker.

Defying the norm of a typical ransomware however, WORM_RANSOM.FD does not ask for money in exchange for the files. Instead, it gives the affected user three options as to how he or she can retrieve his or her files:

So, unless Windows users are willing to migrate to Linux or wait for the decryptor program that may or may not come, Option 1 may seem the only plausible solution. Resourceful techies may opt to try their hand in manually decrypting the files, but for those stuck with Option 1, Trend Micro already provides a fixtool that will automatically restore the files.

Our experts believe that ransomware is a high-risk/moderate reward business model that will not significantly increase. This is because it goes against one of the key features most cybercriminals are relying on in terms of developing malware, which is stealth. Almost all aspects of a ransomware attack is quite visible.

For one, the payload is visible — users are informed that their files are held hostage, so these users can easily turn to their AV vendors for help in detection/cleanup, mitigating further infection from other users. Another is that cybercriminals have to leave contact details for the payment. These contact details can be used by law enforcement to track down the attackers.

Users who’ve found themselves victims of this attack may either use Trend Micro’s fixtool or ask for assistance.