While Finjan was researching a server hosting a new version of NeoSploit crimeware toolkit, a database of over 8,000 ftp accounts was uncovered. 10% of Alexa’s top 100 domains login username & password are in the database. A majority of the accounts originate in the United States.

Also uncovered was a trading application that rates the quality of the compromised accounts according to location of the ftp server. This allows hackers to put a price on the stolen accounts.

These login credentials were stolen by appending an HTML iframe tag onto the victims website. This type of attack we are finding almost every day during our own research. Finjan identified government websites hosting similar malicious code on their websites. An example they talked about was a website belonging to a State Superior court.

Finjan is offering to identify if your website appears in this database by filling out this form.

Author: Christopher

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Late in December 2007, something Roger Thompson of Grisoft characterized as “a pretty good mass hack” compromised tens of thousands of websites, including edu and gov domains, with an automated SQL injection. The hack exploited a Microsoft SQL Server vulnerability that was over a year old, one that was patched in early 2006 by the MS06-014 security update. The hack injected into SQL databases an SQL iterative loop with a JavaScript tag that appends itself to every column of text. The script instructs browsers reaching the site to execute another script hosted on a malicious server. From what is known, those hacked appeared to share little in common except a common weak spot in their SQL server databases. Since those hacked are not bragging about it, the identities of the hackees as well as the actual purpose of the hackers was, and is, unclear.

Although the mass hack was cleaned up in record time, quickly relieving many fears of disastrous consequences, the possibilities from the hack may have been broader than what actually took place. One professional web developer responding on Thompson’s blog anxiously noted, “Looks like exploits for Y! Messenger, IE TIFF overflow and RealPlayer are also in there. Yikes.” Symantec and other experts analyzing the JavaScript itself agreed that the malicious script targeted a RealPlayer bug, one much more recent that the server vulnerability. The RealPlayer bug targeted had been found and fixed in October 2007, only a couple of months before the hack.

Those hacked were not simply at-home users or amateur server owners. According to Thompson, who reported the hack on January 5, 2008, “some victims were pretty sophisticated in terms of security smarts, including, apparently, some Computer Associates pages.” While it appears that no seriously harmful damage resulted from this particular hack, its massive size leaves many users troubled about other equally vulnerable bugs that may exist in their own server farms.

Author: Christopher

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Al Gore’s Word-Press blog to promote his film “An Inconvenient Truth” was recently hacked with links selling online pharmaceuticals. These types of attacks are far too common with spammers looking for ways to peddle their wares. Like many other blog platforms, Word-Press has been plagued with security exploits and vulnerabilities.

Hackers compromise high profile sites like these to build legitimate links to their empire of sites to build traffic storms and search engine rank.

One of the most effective ways to protect your blogs is to keep the software up to date. It is also common for hackers to add malicious code to blog skins then distribute them publicly through sites like WP-Shere.

Author: Christopher

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August 12th, 2007 the United Nations website (www.un.org) was defaced in an attempt to CyberProtest “Ysrail” and “USA” citing “peace for ever”. This message appeared on pages generally reserved for quotes and speeches from the secretary general Ban Ki-moon as well as on other well know websites.

The hackers website states the CyberProtect’s objective, “that the powerful have no right to oppress the powerless”. The website also mentions other websites they allegedly hacked, including Harvard University, The UN Environment Program, Toyota, and Nestle.

Web applications are commonly a problem for most organization’s security strategy as they are not protected by the corporate firewall. It is said 75% of all cyber attacks are done at the web application level.

Monitoring patches and security notices for common out of the box web applications is very effective at minimizing your risk. Regular web vulnerability scanning and server hardening is the best way to ensure you are protected.

If you do e-commerce on your website, you also have to keep PCI Compliance in mind as non-compliance penalties are as high as $500,000. Web vulnerability scanning covers some of the PCI Compliance requirements.

Author: Christopher

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