Security Friday: May 9 2008

New Spam Record

Figure this, 50% of spam comes from a single source, a 3,00,000 zombie computers strong botnet called Srizbi.

An excerpt from Infoworld:

Joe Stewart, director at U.S. consultancy Secure Works, said the Srizbi Trojan is the biggest botnet in history and the most powerful. He said Srizbi, aka “Cbeplay” and “Exchanger,” can blast out 60 billion messages a day.

Storm is now in a tea cup after its spam output was cut down to a mere 2 percent, due to widespread media coverage which kicked off a race by security vendors to squash the threat.

Other botnets spitting spam are Rustock, Mega-D, Spam-D and Storm (in that order). Botnets operate by surreptitiously installing on a system and co-ordinating with a command center. Spreading across hundreds of systems, the command center is used to trigger massive data outbursts such as the one that contributes all the spam mentioned above. What makes the task of detecting them tough is that they have been engineered to shut down randomly, making detection that much tougher. Botnets today represent the single largest threat to the Internet.

The Storm Worm : Bruce Schnier

Virus spreading via Audio file: Not Really

Fake mp3s and movie files doing the rounds on P2P networks such as limewire are actually trojan horse programs reports McAfee.

An excerpt from PC World:

On Tuesday, security vendor McAfee reported that it’s seen a huge spike in fake MP3 files spreading on peer-to-peer networks. Although the files have names that make them look like audio recordings, they’re really Trojan horse programs that try to install a shoddy media player and adware on your computer, said Craig Schmugar, a researcher with McAfee.

“Once you run it, there is no content. You’re taken to this site to install this player which you don’t really need,” he said.

The file prompts for the installation of a player for the file. This is the flag to keep note of. If you have a media player on your system it should play the file. Period. No more questions asked.

Attack on online epilepsy forum triggers migraines, seizures

As invective as its gets, hackers seemed to be able to inflict physical pain from the malicious links posted to the Epilepsy Foundation’s site. The links lead to sources with rapidly flashing images that caused migraines and seizures among many viewers.

An excerpt from Associated Press:

The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they’re exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.

The attack happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation’s publishing software that allowed them to quickly make numerous posts and overwhelm the site’s support forums.

The security breach was plugged but it does give reason to contemplate the extent to which freedom to post content can be exploited.

Arun on May 9, 2008 Subscribe to our RSS Feed