Texas National Guard site disappears after malware attack
Print storyThe $50 exorcism
Posted in Security, 19th September 2008 19:51 GMT
Webcast: Building Applications for the 21st Century
The website for the Texas National Guard remained unreachable on Friday, two days after security researchers said it had been hacked by miscreants who were using it to install malware on the PCs of visitors.
On Wednesday, Roger Thompson, chief research officer of anti-virus provider AVG, reported that selected pages on the site were attempting to install a rootkit on machines that were not fully patched. The ruse starts by silently redirecting visitors to a site called add-block-plus.net, which in turn bounces visitors to several other sites. In the end, visitors who are vulnerable get a demand to cough up $50 in order to exorcise the demons.
The attack comes as the Texas National Guard responds to Hurricane Ike, which earlier this week ravaged the gulf coast of Texas. Someone answering the guard's public affairs line said the person responsible for the website was busy with relief efforts.
According to Sophos researchers here, the Texas National Guard is only one of many sites to be hit in the attack. The malware residing on the site is detected as Mal/ObfJS-A. ®
The Register Guide to Extended Validation
LDAP Injection [3-2APZ1KL]
Blind SQL Injection [3-2APYM5E]
Preventing Google Hacking [3-2APYMGU]
Building Web Application Security into Your Development Process [3-2APYMBV]
Inmate hacked prison network, broke into employee database
Miscreants hijacking machines via (freshly patched) Adobe flaw
Martial law planned for Craigslist's red-light district
Cocaine addicted IT manager hacks ex-employer's mail servers