Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/24/auction_site_malware/

Auction tools firm roots out malware infection

Trojan goes under the hammer at Auctiva.com

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 24th February 2009 17:43 GMT

Auction tools site Auctiva.com has cleaned up its systems after it became the unwitting participant in a malware attack late last week.

The issue became public after Google's malware warning system warned that Auctiva.com was infected by malware. eBay users complained of security problems involving Auctiva.com on eBay's forums around the same time.

Auctiva.com acknowledged a problem on Saturday, initiating a clean-up operation that restored the site (albeit operating off fewer servers) a few hours later. It took other Auctiva.com webservers offline in rotation as a precautionary measure on Monday, in a move that allowed it to pinpoint the problem. Auctiva said the infection originated in China.

The site was finally restored to full health on Tuesday morning, a notice on Auctiva support forum explained.

Auctiva.com is up and running as of around 5am this morning. We are on a more segregated network with increased security.

We feel confident the root issue of our virus was identified and we're moving forward with the necessary protection to prevent this from happening again.

Surfers who visited the site between Thursday and Saturday afternoon were potentially exposed to malicious scripts, which attempted to exploit IE vulnerabilities to serve gaming password stealing Trojans onto vulnerable systems, security blogger Dancho Danchev adds. ®