SophosLabs – What is Fake Anti-Virus?

Justin Bieber fans under fire in YouTube XSS attack

If there are any breathless fans of Justin Bieber reading this – let me calm you straight away: Justin Bieber has not died in a car crash.

 

But you may have imagined that he did if you checked out some of his YouTube videos this long US Independence Day holiday weekend, or read one of the many internet rumours that spread over the last day or so.

 

A vulnerability in YouTube’s comment system was exploited widely this weekend, allowing mischief-makers to embed code through a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw. And one of the things they did was post messages claiming that the teen pop sensation had died in a car crash.

 

Normally YouTube is smart enough to weed out offending code left in the comments left for videos, but it appears that the hackers found a way to waltz past the site’s defences.

 

Those watching YouTube videos of Justin Bieber and others could find their eyeballs assaulted by other prankish pop-ups and offensive messages or redirected to tasteless websites.

It took about two hours before Google, YouTube’s parent company, got things under control.

 

XSS attacks are a serious problem, of course. Potentially they can fool unsuspecting users into handing over their login details (although this doesn’t appear to have happened on this occasion) or direct them to a malicious webpage.

 

Read More…

 

YouTube on IE is forcing to update the flash player

If you are visiting YouTube and you want to watch any video you will see this message like this picture:

 

Because there is a critical vulnerabilities that have been discovered in the current versions of Adobe Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh, Solaris and Linux.

 

Best Of SOPHOS (Video)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to remove International dialer Trojan on 3D Anti Terrorist (Windows Mobile) (Video)

 

You will need a Reg Editor, Notification queue Manager, File Explorer

( we are using http://www.dotfred.net/TaskMgr.htm in the video )

 

Related Blogs

Video of Twitter phishing: The BZPharma ‘LOL this is funny’ attack (Video)

Twitter users are being warned about a widespread phishing attack spreading across the system, designed to steal the usernames and passwords of unsuspecting members.

 

Messages include

Lol. this is me??
lol , this is funny.
Lol. this you??

followed by a link in the form of

http://example.com/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma.net/login

where ‘example.com’ can vary. As we have seen many variations of the URL in its entirety, you would be wise to avoid clicking on any links which refer to bzpharma.net at the very least.

 

Watch this YouTube video for more details:

(Enjoy this video? You can check out more on the SophosLabs YouTube channel and subscribe if you like)

Although Twitter has urged users to be vigilant about the threat being distributed via private direct messages, it’s clear that dangerous links are also being posted in public feeds. This means that you can stumble across the links even if you aren’t sent it directly, or even if you are not a signed-up user of Twitter.

 

It appears what is happening is that the messages are being shared more widely because of third-party services like GroupTweet which extend the standard Twitter direct message (DM) functionality and allow private messages to be sent to multiple users *and* optionally made public.

 

As a result, as you can see in the video above, we have found Twitter accounts that have warned their followers about the phishing attack, only to subsequently fall victim to it themselves!

 

Regardless of how you come to click on the dangerous link, if you do enter your username and password on the fake Twitter login page your details will be phished and placed in the hands of hackers.

 

The page then displays a “fail whale” screen, claiming that Twitter is over capacity, before taking you back to the real Twitter main page. As a result, compromised Twitter users may not realise that their login details have been stolen.

 

Interestingly, the bzpharma.net site doesn’t just appear to have been set up for Twitter phishing. It appears to also have been created for stealing the online identities of the Bebo social networking site too:

 

If you have been tricked by the phishing attack and accidentally handed over your username and password, change your password immediately.

 

We’re going to see many more attacks against social networks in the future I’m afraid. Last month, Sophos published its Security Threat Report revealing that there had been an astonishing 70% rise in the number of users reporting spam and malware attacks via social networks in the last year.

 

Update: The phishing campaign appears to be bearing fruit for the hackers as they are now distributing spam selling herbal viagra from the compromised accounts. Learn more now.

 

By Graham Cluley, Sophos

 

Surveillance rootkits on smartphones

Liviu Iftode and Vinod Ganapathy, two researchers at Rutgers University, have revealed some experiments they have been conducting, showing how rootkits could be used to take control of smartphones.

 

The scientists have shown that a malicious attacker could cause a smartphone to “eavesdrop on a meeting, track its owner’s travels, or rapidly drain its battery to render the phone useless”.

 

Watch the following YouTube video to learn more:

 

 

It’s a cute little video, but how realistic is this threat in reality?

 

I don’t think the kind of attack described by Iftode and Ganapathy is a big deal right now.

 

Yes, it is possible to change or put software onto a smartphone (by, for instance, installing a rootkit) so that the mobile device then performs malicious functions. For instance, code that enables covert remote surveillance, battery drainage or silently steals data.

 

Of course, this relies upon the smartphone allowing you to make changes to its low-level software. Popular smartphones like the Apple iPhone lock down that kind of meddling to a great extent.

 

So, the key thing to remember is that the bad guys have to somehow get the malicious rootkit onto your phone in the first place.

 

How are they going to do that?

 

They would either need to have physical access to your smartphone, exploit an unpatched security vulnerability or use a social engineering attack to trick you into installing malicious code. Even if they went down the “trick” route they would be relying upon the phone’s OS to allow you to install unapproved apps (iPhones, for instance, are strictly controlled by their Cupertino-based overlords, allowing users to only install code that has been approved and checked by the AppStore).

 

So it doesn’t sound like what Iftode and Ganapathy are describing is actually any different from the rootkits that infect traditional desktop computers. The main difference is that there are probably less opportunities (and thus much harder) to infect a mobile phone than, say, a computer running Windows.

 

Furthermore, I would argue that the typical mobile phone user is still typically less used to installing applications than their Windows counterparts, and so the chances of success via fooling the user into installing a dangerous application can be assumed to be even lower.

 

Iftode and Ganapathy have not demonstrated any revolutionary new way of getting round the biggest hurdle for those wanting to spy on smartphones: how are they going to get the malware onto the phone?

 

If I really wanted to snoop on someone’s phone I think it would probably be easier to swap my victim’s mobile phone for an identical (but bugged) device rather than go to all this effort with no promise of success.

 

Sure, the mobile phone malware threat is growing – but it’s a tiny raindrop in a thunderstorm compared to regular attacks that strike Windows computers. Slowly but slowly it’s becoming more serious (the recent discovery of financially-motivated malware that targets jailbroken iPhones is proof of that), and undoubtedly we will begin to see more users running anti-virus security on their phones in the years to come.

 

However, if I was responsible for securing my company’s mobile phones I would be much more worried about the real security threat of staff losing their phones in taxis or on the train, rather than the theoretical risk of surveillance rootkits.

 

It’s a nice video and presentation that Iftode and Ganapathy made, but I won’t be losing any sleep over it just yet.

 

More information on the topic of smartphone rootkits can be found in the paper Iftode and Ganapathy have produced: “Rootkits on Smart Phones: Attacks, implications and opportunities” [PDF]

 

By Graham Cluley, Sophos

 

President Obama Wants You to Protect Your Computer (Video)

President Obama explains how the growth of digital networks has increased the need to invest in online security, as well as steps individuals can take to protect themselves from online threats. October 14, 2009. (Public Domain)