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| CURRENT SECTION :: TechZone | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
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A cyber attack that has already claimed tens of thousands of victims was yesterday tipped to threaten Web users for the next six months. Hackers presumably based in Eastern Europe are thought to have authored a mass roll out of HTML malware, to exploit a vulnerability in the pages of legitimate websites. Taking advantage of so-called iFrames, the attack begun sometime over the weekend in Italy, but it has now spread to websites in Spain, Thailand and the United States. Security researchers at Trend Micro believe the attack, hailed as the Italian Job, probably started out as an automated attack, created from a Trojan-making kit. Yesterday, kits offering similar software, such as keyloggers, were available to download for £350 from Russian websites, according to disclosures obtained by a UK newspaper. Both the initial attack and the kits have the same aim: to allow its authors to monitor the activity of the computer, netting any entered bank details, credit card numbers and passwords. David Perry, a director at Trend Micro, told The Guardian: “This is a paradigm shift. We can expect to see this kind of thing being replicated now for the next five or six months.” In an online advisory, the firm said the mechanism that spreads the attack is a complex chain. It relies on website owners being unaware that they are compromised, and website users being unaware that surfing through seemingly legitimate pages can actually be part of an infection process. Corporate IT teams were recommended to deploy HTTP-scanning methods, block unneeded protocols and use vulnerability scanning software in the corporate network. Separately, hackers have been continuing their onslaught of legitimate websites, in light of a press report that the London Stock Exchange’s alert service was down for 48 hours. The LSE apologised for the loss of the service, which The Daily Telegraph reported as resulting from hackers creating hundreds of thousands of false alerts, in a bid to disrupt the share price alert service used by more than 14,000 private investors. Jun 21, 2007 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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