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I recently highlighted a study which showed that most of the top software applications failed to take advantage of two major lines of defense built into Microsoft Windows that can help block attacks from hackers and viruses. As it turns out, a majority of anti-virus and security products made for Windows users also forgo these useful security protections.
Posts Tagged: AVG
14
Apr 10
Unpatched Java Exploit Spotted In-the-Wild
Last week, a Google security researcher detailed a little-known feature built into Java that can be used to launch third-party applications. Today, security experts unearthed evidence that a popular song lyrics Web site was compromised and seeded with code that leverages this Java feature to install malicious software.
On April 9, Google researcher Tavis Ormandy posted to the FullDisclosure mailing list that he’d discovered he could abuse a feature in Java to launch arbitrary applications on a Windows PC using a specially-crafted Web site. Ormandy said the feature had been included in every version of Java since Java 6 Update 10, and was intended as a way to make it easier for developers to distribute their applications. Along with that disclosure, Ormandy published several examples of how attackers might use this functionality in Java to load malicious applications onto a user’s system.
As of this morning, songlyrics.com, a site that according to traffic analysis firm compete.com receives about 1.7 million visits each month, was loading code from assetmancomcareers.com, a Russian Web site with a history of pushing rogue anti-virus. The domain name servers for assetmancomcareers.com also serve:
spyeraser-security.com
spyeraser-trial.com
spyeraser-software.com
According to Roger Thompson, chief research officer at AVG, the site appears to use the very same code mentioned in Ormandy’s proof-of-concept to silently redirect songlyrics.com visitors to a site that loads the “Crimepack” exploit kit, a relatively new kit designed to throw a heap of software exploits at visiting browsers (see screenshot of a Crimepack administration page below).
It’s unclear whether Oracle plans to change the behavior of this feature in Java. For now, if you have Java installed on your system (don’t know? click here), you might consider implementing one or both of the workarounds mentioned here in a SANS Internet Storm Center writeup on this.
29
Mar 10
Removing Viruses from a PC That Won’t Boot
One of the more common questions I hear from readers with computer virus infections is, “How do I get rid of a virus if I can’t even boot up into Windows to run an anti-virus scan?” Fortunately, there are a number of free, relatively easy-to-use tools that can help on this front.
The tools in this review are known as a “rescue CDs.” These are all free, Linux-based operating systems that one can download and burn to a CD-Rom. Once you’ve configured your PC to boot from the CD you’ve just burned, you can use the CD to scan your hard drive, and — depending on the type of rescue CD you choose — even copy files to a removable drive.
