Zeus Trojan Author Ran With Spam Kingpins

February 17, 2012
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The cybercrime underground is expanding each day, yet the longer I study it the more convinced I am that much of it is run by a fairly small and loose-knit group of hackers. That suspicion was reinforced this week when I discovered that the author of the infamous ZeuS Trojan was a core member of Spamdot, until recently the most exclusive online forum for spammers and the shady businessmen who support the big spam botnets.

Thanks to a deep-seated enmity between the owners of two of the largest spam affiliate programs, the database for Spamdot was leaked to a handful of investigators and researchers, including KrebsOnSecurity. The forum includes all members’ public posts and private messages — even those that members thought had been deleted. I’ve been poring over those private messages in an effort to map alliances and to learn more about the individuals behind the top spam botnets.

The Zeus author’s identity on Spamdot, selling an overstock of “installs.”

As I was reviewing the private messages of a Spamdot member nicknamed “Umbro,” I noticed that he gave a few key members his private instant message address, the jabber account bashorg@talking.cc. In 2010, I learned from multiple reliable sources that for several months, this account was used exclusively by the ZeuS author to communicate with new and existing customers. When I dug deeper into Umbro’s private messages, I found several from other Spamdot members who were seeking updates to their ZeuS botnets. In messages from 2009 to a Spamdot member named “Russso,” Umbro declares flatly, “hi, I’m the author of Zeus.”

Umbro’s public and private Spamdot postings offer a fascinating vantage point for peering into an intensely competitive and jealously guarded environment in which members feed off of each others’ successes and failures. The messages also provide a virtual black book of customers who purchased the ZeuS bot code.

In the screen shot above, the ZeuS author can be seen selling surplus “installs,” offering to rent hacked machines that fellow forum members can seed with their own spam bots (I have added a translation beneath each line). His price is $60 per 1,000 compromised systems. This is a very reasonable fee and is in line with rates charged by more organized pay-per-install businesses that also tend to stuff host PCs with so much other malware that customers who have paid to load their bots on those machines soon find them unstable or unusable. Other members apparently recognized it as a bargain as well, and he quickly received messages from a number of interested takers.

The image below shows the Zeus author parceling out a small but potentially valuable spam resource that was no doubt harvested from systems compromised by his Trojan. In this solicitation, dated Jan. 2008, Umbro is selling a mailing list that would be especially useful for targeted email malware campaigns.

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Flash Player Update Nixes Zero-Day Flaw

February 15, 2012
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Adobe has issued a critical security update for its ubiquitous Flash Player software. The patch plugs at least seven security holes, including one reported by Google that is already being used to trick users into clicking on malicious links delivered via email.

In an advisory released Wednesday afternoon, Adobe warned that one of the flaws — a cross-site scripting vulnerability (CVE-2012-0767) reported by Google —  was being used in the wild in active, targeted attacks designed to trick users into clicking on a malicious link delivered in an email message. The company said the flaw could be used to take actions on a user’s behalf on any website or webmail provider, if the user visits a malicious website. A spokesperson for the company said this particular attack only works against Internet Explorer on Windows.

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Java Security Update Scrubs 14 Flaws

February 15, 2012
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Oracle has shipped a critical update that fixes at least 14 security vulnerabilities in its Java JRE software. The company is urging users to deploy the fixes as quickly as possible.

Java flaws are a favorite target of miscreants and malware because of the program’s power and massive install base: Oracle estimates that Java is installed on more than three billion machines worldwide.

In an emailed advisory accompanying the new release, Oracle urged users to update without delay. “Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply fixes as soon a possible.”

The new versions are Java 6 Update 31, and Java 7 Update 3. To see if you have Java installed and to find out what version you have, visit Java.com and click the “Do I have Java?” link. Existing users should be able to update by visiting the Windows Control Panel and clicking the Java icon, or by searching for “Java” and clicking the “Update Now” button from the Update tab. Continue reading →

Microsoft AV Flags Google.com as ‘Blacole’ Malware

February 14, 2012
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Computers running Microsoft‘s antivirus and security software may be flagging google.com — the world’s most-visited Web site — as malicious, apparently due to a faulty Valentine’s Day security update shipped by Microsoft.

Microsoft's antivirus software flagged google.com as bad.

Not long after Microsoft released software security updates on Tuesday, the company’s Technet support forums lit up with complaints about Internet Explorer sounding the malware alarm when users visited google.com.

The alerts appear to be the result of a “false positive” detection shipped to users of Microsoft’s antivirus and security products, most notably its Forefront technology and free “Security Essentials” antivirus software.

I first learned of this bug from a reader, and promptly updated a Windows XP system I have that runs Microsoft Security Essentials. Upon reboot, Internet Explorer told me that my homepage — google.com — was serving up a “severe” threat —  Exploit:JS/Blacole.BW. For whatever reason, Microsoft’s security software thought Google’s homepage was infected with a Blackhole Exploit Kit.

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Critical Fixes from Microsoft, Adobe

February 14, 2012
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If you use Microsoft Windows, it’s time again to get patched: Microsoft today issued nine updates to fix at least 21 security holes in its products. Separately, Adobe released a critical update that addresses nine vulnerabilities in its Shockwave Player software.

Four of the patches earned Microsoft’s most dire “critical” rating, meaning that miscreants and malware can leverage the flaws to hijack vulnerable systems remotely without any help from the user.  At least four of the vulnerabilities were publicly disclosed prior to the release of these patches.

The critical patches repair faulty components that can lead to browse-and-get-owned scenarios; among those is a fix for a vulnerability in Microsoft Silverlight, a browser plugin that is required by a number of popular sites — including Netflix — and can affect multiple browsers and even Mac systems. Microsoft believes that attackers are likely to quickly devise reliable exploits to attack at least a dozen of the 21 flaws it is fixing with this month’s release.

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Collaboration Fuels Rapid Growth of Citadel Trojan

February 9, 2012
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Late last month I wrote about Citadel, an “open source” version of the ZeuS Trojan whose defining feature is a social networking platform where users can report and fix programming bugs, suggest and vote on new features, and generally guide future development of the botnet malware. Since then, I’ve been given a peek inside that community, and the view so far suggests that Citadel’s collaborative approach is fueling rapid growth of this new malware strain.

The CRM page shows democracy in action among Citadel botnet users.

A customer who bought a license to the Citadel Trojan extended an invitation to drop in on that community of hackers. Those who have purchased the software can interact with the developers and other buyers via comments submitted to the Citadel Store, a front-end interface that is made available after users successfully navigate through a two-step authentication process.

Upon logging into the Citadel Store, users see the main “customer resource management” page, which shows the latest breakdown of votes cast by all users regarding the desirability of proposed new features in the botnet code.

In the screen shot to the right, we can see democracy in action among miscreants: The image shows the outcome of voting on several newly proposed modules for Citadel, including a plugin that searches for specific files on the victim’s PC, and a “mini-antivirus” program that can clean up a variety of malware, adware and other parasites already on the victim’s computer that may prevent Citadel from operating cleanly or stealthily. Currently, there are nine separate modules that can be voted and commented on by the Citadel community.

Drilling down into the details page for each suggested botnet plugin reveals comments from various users about the suggested feature (screenshot below). Overall, users seem enthusiastic about most suggested new features, although several customers used the comments section to warn about potential pitfalls in implementing the proposed changes. Continue reading →

Crimevertising: Selling Into the Malware Channel

February 8, 2012
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Anyone who’s run a Web site is probably familiar with the term “malvertising,” which occurs when crooks hide exploits and malware inside of legitimate-looking ads that are submitted to major online advertising networks. But there’s a relatively new form of malware-based advertising that’s gaining ground — otherwise harmless ads for illicit services that are embedded inside the malware itself.

At its most basic, this form of advertising — which I’m calling “crimevertising” for want of a better term — has been around for many years. Most often it takes the form of banner ads on underground forums that hawk everything from cybercriminal employment opportunities to banking Trojans and crooked cashout services. More recently, malware authors have started offering the ability to place paid ads in the Web-based administrative panels that customers use to control their botnets. Such placements afford advertisers an unprecedented opportunity to keep their brand name in front of the eyeballs of their target audience for hours on end.

The author of the Blackhole exploit pack is selling ad space on his kit's administration page, as seen in this screenshot.

A perfect example of crimevertising 2.0 is the interface for the Blackhole Exploit Kit, crimeware that makes it simple for just about anyone to build a botnet. The business end of this kit is stitched into hacked or malicious Web sites, and visitors with outdated browser plugins get redirected to sites that serve malware of the miscreant’s choosing. Blackhole users can monitor new victims and the success rates of the compromised sites using a browser-based administrative panel.

In the screen shot above, the administration panel of a working Blackhole exploit kit shows two different ads; both promote the purchase and sale of Internet traffic. And here is a prime example of just how targeted this advertising can be: The most common reason miscreants purchase Internet traffic is to redirect it to sites they’ve retrofitted with exploit kits like Blackhole.

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Forcing Flash to Play in the Sandbox

February 7, 2012
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Adobe has released a public beta version of its Flash Player software for Firefox that forces the program to run in a heightened security mode or “sandbox” designed to block attacks that target vulnerabilities in the software.

Sandboxing is an established security mechanism that runs the targeted application in a confined environment that blocks specific actions by that app, such as installing or deleting files, or modifying system information. The same technology has been built into the latest versions of Adobe Reader X, and it has been enabled for some time in Google Chrome, which contains its own integrated version of Flash. But this is the first time sandboxing has been offered in a public version of Flash for Firefox.

Flash is a big target of attackers partly because it is a powerful program with a huge install base; vulnerability management firm Secunia estimates that some version of Flash is installed in 96 percent of the world’s Microsoft PCs. Windows users can further harden their systems against such attacks by swapping out their current version of Flash for this beta. Continue reading →

Half of Fortune 500s, US Govt. Still Infected with DNSChanger Trojan

February 2, 2012
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More than two months after authorities shut down a massive Internet traffic hijacking scheme, the malicious software that powered the  criminal network is still running on computers at half of the Fortune 500 companies, and on PCs at nearly 50 percent of all federal government agencies, new research shows.

Source: FBI

The malware, known as the “DNSChanger Trojan,” quietly alters the host computer’s Internet settings to hijack search results and to block victims from visiting security sites that might help scrub the infections. DNSChanger frequently was bundled with other types of malware, meaning that systems infected with the Trojan often also host other, more nefarious digital parasites.

In early November, authorities in Estonia arrested six men suspected of using the Trojan to control more than four million computers in over 100 countries — including an estimated 500,000 in the United States. Investigators timed the arrests with a coordinated attack on the malware’s infrastructure. The two-pronged attack was intended to prevent miscreants from continuing to control the network of hacked PCs, and to give Internet service providers an opportunity to alert customers with infected machines.

But that cleanup process has been slow-going, according to at least one security firm. Internet Identity, a Tacoma, Wash. company that sells security services, found evidence of at least one DNSChanger infection in computers at half of all Fortune 500 firms, and 27 out of 55 major government entities.

“Yes, there are challenges with removing this malware, but you would think people would want to get this cleaned up,” said Rod Rasmussen, president and chief technology officer at Internet Identity. “This malware was sometimes bundled with other stuff, but it also turns off antivirus software on the infected machines and blocks them from getting security updates from Microsoft.”

Computers still infected with DNSChanger are up against a countdown clock. As part of the DNSChanger botnet takedown, the feds secured a court order to replace the Trojan’s DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers. But those servers are only allowed to operate until March 8, 2012. Unless the court extends that order, any computers still infected with DNSChanger may no longer be able to browse the Web.

Rasmussen said there are still millions of PCs infected with DNSChanger. “At this rate, a lot of users are going to see their Internet break on March 8.”

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Who’s Behind the World’s Largest Spam Botnet?

February 1, 2012
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A Wikileaks-style war of attrition between two competing rogue Internet pharmacy gangs has exposed some of the biggest spammers on the planet. The latest casualties? Several individuals likely responsible for running Grum, currently the world’s most active spam botnet.

Grum is the top spam botnet, according to M86Security

In the summer of 2010, hackers stole and leaked the database for SpamIt and Glavmed, sister programs that paid people to promote fly-by-night online pharmacies. According to that data, the second-most successful affiliate in SpamIt was a member nicknamed “GeRa.” Over a 3-year period, GeRa’s advertisements and those of his referrals resulted in at least 80,000 sales of knockoff pharmaceuticals, brought SpamIt revenues of in excess of $6 million, and earned him and his pals more than $2.7 million.

A variety of data indicate that GeRa is the lead hacker behind Grum, a spam botnet that can send more than 18 billion emails a day and is the primary vehicle for more than a third of all junk email.

Hackers bent on undermining SpamIt leaked thousands of chats between SpamIt members and Dmitry Stupin, the co-administrator of the program. The chats show daily communication between GeRa and Stupin; the conversations were usually about setting up new spamming operations or fixing problems with existing infrastructure. In fact, Stupin would remark that GeRa was by far the most bothersome of all the program’s top spammers, telling a fellow SpamIt administrator that, “Neither Docent [Mega-D botmaster] nor Cosma [Rustock botmaster] can compare with him in terms of trouble with hosting providers.”

Several of those chats show GeRa pointing out issues with specific Internet addresses that would later be flagged as control servers for the Grum botnet. For example, in a chat with Stupin on June 11, 2008, GeRa posts a link to the address 206.51.234.136. Then after checking the server, he proceeds to tell Stupin how many infected PCs were phoning home to that address at the time. That same server has long been identified as a Grum controller.

By this time, Grum had grown to such an established threat that it was named in the Top Spam Botnets Exposed paper released by Dell SecureWorks researcher Joe Stewart. On  April 13, 2008 – just five days after Stewart’s analysis was released –  GeRa would post a link to it into a chat with Stupin, saying “Haha, I am also on the list!” Continue reading →