Worm Exploit Distributed by Advertising Network 478
Zocalo writes "Given that a lot of Slashdot readers also check The Register, it's important to note that their Internet advertising provider, Falk AG, was compromised by the BOFRA exploit yesterday. The Falk AG service has been suspended by The Register and a statement from Falk AG is due on Monday. The upshot is that if you visited the Register yesterday morning and use IE as your browser, then you probably need to run a full virus scan with up to date data files. Of course, those of us running other browsers and something like AdBlock have nothing to worry about. Again." You're OK for now if you're running SP2. There's also a good security writeup about the problem.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Sheesh, where is accountability? Blame the sysadmins, blame the software, pity the customer. Lather, rinse repeat.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
yes. but will they be able to implement when they have these guys [theregister.co.uk] running their servers?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
You left someone out: web developers as a whole, who have insisted on more and more complicated HTML extensions instead of just working with the rather powerful stuff they had at their disposal in the first place. These are the folks that make the "core functionality set" of any competitive browser so large that the software to support it is incredibly complex. That guarantees us a steady flow of bugs and exploits.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Dutch news-site (with a fairly large, non-techie audience) nu.nl [nu.nl] was affected as well, a large warning was put up Saturday.
The warning [startpagina.nl] (sorry, dutch only) mentioned that until Sunday afternoon, they received 1300 requests for help from possibly-affected visitors.
As far as accountability goes, it was nice to see the publisher, Ilse Media, put up a clear FAQ and even a special-purpose contact-form to accomodate for their not-web-savvy users.
They also mentioned further statements from Falk AG were forthcoming Monday 22nd.
Using an alternative browser [mozilla.org], with AdBlock [texturizer.net] installed, I wasn't affected myself...
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, corporate users can have their IT guy stick in a Linux web-proxy server to help protect the useless Microsoft Windows system from yet another attack. They can rack it next to the Linux box used to filter the spam, the Linux box used to strip all the Microsoft Windows viruses out of e-mail and file shares, and the Linux based firewalls protecting the whole army of Microsoft Windows flawed desktops.
It is likely that
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I do believe you have this precisely backwards. By the way, please note that if people used Linux or OS-X, we would not *need* to block all this shit in the first place.
"They don't need to. You click a button, and it keeps you up to date. Someone with automatic update wouldn't even need to know what SP2 is, but they would be up to date.
Can you point me to the patch for Win2k then? Thanks.
And they wouldn't have to spend hours trying to figure out how to upgrade their OS like they do with Linux."
Never heard of apt, yum, urpmi, or up2date? And as a bonus for Linux users, we do not have to reboot either, save for a kernel update.
Windows is for those with more money than sense.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
True, but the Linux proxy is obviously uninfectable by anything that could infect the end-user systems being protected. This isn't as obvious with a Windows proxy- you need to know a little more about how the proxy works, how it does its filtering, what vulnerabilities it has, etc. The person making purchasing decisions may not be comfortable with his ability to judge the vulnerability of a Windows proxy. You also need to do a more thorough lockdown because of all the damn features crammed into Windows' every orifice. And keep in mind it can be infected from the inside as well.
In general the best networking strategies involve as diverse a set of operating systems as possible, so that no one agent can infect them all. I would go for a BSD proxy. Since it's always "dying", it offers bulletproof security.
You don't need Linux, unless you aren't smart enough to figure out how to work Windows.
clap clap clap... Post of the week!
Someone with automatic update wouldn't even need to know what SP2 is, but they would be up to date.
And that person would have more balls than I do for leaving that thing on automatic. Every SP2 install I have done so far has turned into a nerve-wracking experience.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
As a rule of thumb: they all are.
Seriously. Most of the major ad networks have distributed ActiveX drive-by-downloads and *many* have distributed exploits. Almost everyone in the online ad market has dirty hands.
Falk are known to have served exploits for some time, but I guess this is the first time they've hit the Reg.
The exploits are going absolutely crazy right now - they're *everywhere*. See also this incident:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,11904374~m
It used to be that IE users could just avoid browsing untrusted sites to stay safe. Not any more. Anyone browsing with IE pre-SP2 and no extra precautions is going to get hit sooner or later, and most likely it'll be with enough chain-loading parasites to render the machine barely usable.
(SP2 of course is not safe either, having publically known exploits; but they don't seem to be targeted by the large exploit nets... yet.)
Sorry but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sorry but ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sorry but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry but ... (Score:3)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Hosts File (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hosts File (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hosts File (Score:5, Funny)
I set things up so that *.doubleclick.net etc resolved to a webserver in the company, and the webserver served up "localized content".
So tons of ads were replaced by the company logo
Surprising how few noticed! No I didn't get fired.
Maybe I should have served up announcements instead of just the company logo. e.g. "The Company Is Your Friend". "Staff Meeting at 2PM". "You There! Stop Surfing!". "Exploit e-Business Initiatives". "Da Boss is In The Building!"
Anyway this would save bandwidth and be possibly useful - you could also extend it and customize content on a per user/IP basis.
Re:Hosts File (Score:4, Informative)
One more reason to run your own DNS server:
zone "falkag.net" { type master; file "/etc/bind/db.empty"; };
Re:Hosts File (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hosts File (Score:5, Informative)
0.0.0.0 Hosts File (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hosts File (Score:2)
And in that case, no matter what IP you type in it'll still sit and wait for a time-out (whatever the app thinks a time-out period is).
That's a bad app, not a bad design.
Re:Hosts File (Score:5, Funny)
Not in XP! in XP the chances are you already have a trojan-server running on 127.0.0.1:80 so it should respond instantly!
Re:Hosts File (Score:2, Informative)
Use that, so that instead of it routing to localhost (and thereby taking a bit longer), it routes to
Re:Hosts File (Score:2, Interesting)
Text-Ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Text-Ads (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Text-Ads (Score:3, Insightful)
This won't make a big difference if Google (for instance) was compromised, a virus could replace the innocent text-ads (which are dynamically inserted client side via JavaScript in Google's case) with whatever malicious code it may desire.
Fortunately.. (Score:3, Interesting)
"You're OK for now if you're running SP2." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"You're OK for now if you're running SP2." (Score:2)
Re:"You're OK for now if you're running SP2." (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the problem is caused by some incompatibility between SP2 and my wireless LAN card's drivers. It doesn't happen if I don't have the card in there. I need to use the card, so there isn't anything I can do to work around this problem. Unfortunately for me the manufacturer hasn't released any patches to the (buggy I'm sure) drivers. From what I've gathered online they rely on an undocumented interface in Windows that was broken by SP2.
BTW, uninstalling and reinstalling SP2 didn't help. Microsoft's site actually acknowledges the problem with the blue screens and the specific DLL updated by SP2 that causes them, but they don't have any patch available yet.
Interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm... My Win machine is running SP4. Oh, you mean XP SP2. Not on my machines, man... The highest I'll go on my personal machines is 2k.
Aside, you left out another browser of very worthy note. [konqueror.org] Oh, well, make that two. [apple.com]
No one is safe... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sad thing was the company was based in the Netherlands so it wasn't even worth pursuing legally... but if you are on the net, you aren't safe. MS products are more insecure, but you should always take steps to protect yourself, like keep the OS and applications up to date, etc etc
Re:No one is safe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you are a Mac user that is. Every time there is anything in the news or
Re:No one is safe... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No one is safe... (Score:2)
Man, I know you'r kidding, but I've already been paid to play games (for a quality assurance department). The idea was to test and benchmark the latest hardware, and that included playing games on it, and no, it couldn't be done without Windows.
Re:No one is safe... (Score:2)
-sob-
Re:No one is safe... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to switch every Windows user that I know to Linux, *BSD, or (if they're in the market for a new computer) Mac OS X. However, there are a few reasons why many people are still using Windows, and will stick with it for about another two years or so:
Even so, things are getting brighter for these alternate OSes every day. The graphical environments for *nix are getting easier to use with every new release of KDE and GNOME. In fact, if I switched my parents and siblings to *nix tomorrow, they might feel comfortable (provided that I set everything up, that is). Many Windows users are now starting to see the benefits of Open Source software (through OSS projects such as Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice), and they will feel more comfortable once they make the switch. Hardware support for *nix is getting improved by the day, and more manufacturers are starting to take a look at *nix compatibility. On the Mac side of things, more people are getting exposed to Apple products (through the iPod) and are learning about the virtues of having a Mac.
Finally, security is starting to become much more important to comptuer users, even the Joe Average type, these days. It used to be that the Internet was a reasonably nice place to go to to find information and to communicate. Now, it is infested with commerical advertising, popups, insecure "portals" to the Internet (*cough Internet Exploiter* cough), and malware. Stuff that we never would have guessed that would happen about a decade (or even five years) ago, such as phishing and worms activated by just browsing a web page, are happening now. More people are becoming aware about the dangers of viruses, worms, spyware, adware, and the other crap that happens on the Windows platform daily. More people are starting to learn about alternate browsers such as Firefox and Opera. Some people are now finally setting up firewalls and anti-malware applications so that way they would be safer from the dangers of the Internet. Some are even planning the switch to a Mac, *nix, or another alternative.
I believe with the current landscape of computing, the Windows hegemony will last another two to three years. I feel with all of the improvements that *nix and OS X are making each and every day, the computing environment will be pretty interesting in the years to come....
Re:No one is safe... (Score:2)
I don't get it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2)
There's an OS besides XP, sweetie. As long as people like Dell sell machines
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2)
I agree with you. If I had some mod points, I'd mod you up. MS shouldn't have to give security patches to every single version of Windows that it currently supports; same goes for other software (you wouldn't expect the Mozilla Foundation to release bug fixes for Firefox 0.9.3, even though Firefox 1.0 is the latest version). Unfortunately, there are still lots of Windows machines out there still running Windows 95, 98, NT, ME, and 2000. Some of these people can't afford Windows XP, never mind the fact t
Your argument is invalid... (Score:3, Insightful)
If Microsoft say they will support older operating systems (i.e. Windows 2000) then they need to support it 100% (not 90%, for the extra 10% upgrade to XP that they are now). Lots of people paid good money for Windows 2000 and were led to expect full support, including security updates, f
Article's Shameless attack at IE (Score:5, Funny)
That's kool, because all I do is download new browsers for security and never run windows update. That would make too much sense...
Something said on http://www.theregister.co.uk/ (Score:3, Interesting)
I just wanted to make this comment. One of the SP2 versions trashed my computer so bad when I ran it. And I'm still suffering from the effects. Such effects include freezing on websites for minutes at a time. Installing it also took my computer like 10 minutes to boot if I remember correctly.
If you can get an anti-virus program, do it. It's better than nothing.
I hate third party ads. www.tvtome.com serves one malicious ad, unless they took care of it already. If I remember correctly, the "ad" kept asking me to do something, in which I had to end up killing the IE6 process to stop it. But I run an ad blocking program most of the time. I really hope websites switch to text ads, like Google does.
Re:Something said on http://www.theregister.co.uk/ (Score:2)
Viral Marketing (Score:5, Funny)
It's not the first time.. (Score:5, Interesting)
RSS Readers too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:RSS Readers too (Score:2, Insightful)
Not just "The Register" (Score:5, Informative)
ad blocking (Score:2)
How long until anti-virus software has built-in pop-up and ad blocking? It's past due.
Just a little wrinkle... (Score:2)
What if this advertiser wasn't actually exploited? What if this was all just plausible deniability and really an intentional way of getting more spyware and crap out there? We have no way of measuring the ethical standards of these essentially unknown parties but we do know there are people out there willing to make a buck while invading the computer systems of private individuals.
"Oh, we're sorry... we w
Pity the write up is incorrect. (Score:5, Informative)
Buffer overlow protections? (Score:5, Interesting)
However I see many people trusting their lives on SP2's protection even without processor support, and I don't see Microsoft willing to clarify this issue either, so I'm starting to believe that probably there is something else that I am not aware of in SP2 which simulates the same kind of protection on processors without hardware support.
Is SP2 really protecting against stack smashing (for example) on processors without hardware support for non-executable pages? Or is it just general ignorance that Microsoft exploits for their own profit?
Re:Buffer overlow protections? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Buffer overlow protections? (Score:4, Informative)
The improvements included safe unlinking, randomising the base address of the PEB (makes it harder to overwrite the UEF for example), and a heap version of a stack canary called a security cookie.
There are also improvements to the stack security by using a stack canary a la StackGuard compiled in by default for all MS apps.
Basically SP2 does contain a bunch of actual, measurable improvements to the way writeable memory is dealt with. It's not bulletproof but it will screw most 'stock' exploits.
By the way, something that nobody will tell you about BOFRA is that there _is_ a workaround - you can disable active scripting. The exploit uses javascript to allocate masses of heap memory to 'seed' the heap ready for the exploit. This is NOT a fix for all possible ways to attack this bug, just a fix for this particular attack.
Lol yeah right, a virus from a web page! (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago I would have laughed at anyone who said something like that and just ignored it as paranoia by someone who didnt really know much about computers and security or who had been watching too many hacker films. Of course you can't get a virus from visiting a web page thats just stupid, who would allow such insane breaches of security? But Microsoft saw a market: they realised that since most people believed you could get a virus that way, why not match their products with peoples expectations? Next slashdot poll should be who uses IE and why...
A few things. (Score:3, Informative)
Not surprisingly... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what is more amazing (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that this attack happened
or,
The Register editors sacrificed their sacrosanct weekends to post the warning story.
Any regular reader would see that most of the stories abruptly stop at Beer O'Clock on Friday [4 p.m. roughly, depending on British Sunshine].
Due to the regular lack of stories over the weekend, I think the number of readers exposed would have been much less. If it had happened about this time [Monday morning London time] a lot more people would've been exposed.
Class of users infected (Score:3)
The class I'm referring to is the Datacentre Class.
All those hardworking infrastructure people who've managed not to be outsourced to the Cayman Islands.
All those admins who surf to TheRegister from their Win2k3 Advanced Server terminals IN the datacentre via their KVM.
Some SysAdmins don't, granted, but SOME do. When I was doing Unix work at Level3 [level3.com] and Colt [colt.net], we did it all the time. It's a per company, per employee based decision as to whether it occurs.
These servers are much more likely to have gone unpatched due to availability/stability concerns.
So here you have important computers left on all the time, with ph@t bandwidth exposed. Not just some home win98 pIII over a 56K link.
A bit worrying.
Re:So what's new here? (Score:2)
Just so that they can try can be "anti-Microsoft" by spreading worms to their readers.
Brilliant, do you by any chance work for Microsoft?
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:5, Funny)
Are you saying that it is wrong to house the homeless?!
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:2)
You Rock!
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:3, Insightful)
Same thing goes here.
Ah, the Chewbacca defense.
That premise only even begin to make sense if people were preventing OTHER people from seeing the-paid-for advertising. Lets look at it in more detail though...
If you saw a beggar on the way to work the ethical thing to do
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:5, Insightful)
Utter drivel. I suppose you think that it is "theft" to change the channel on the TV when adverts come on, as well. Is it also "theft" to turn the page of a magazine without looking at the adverts on it? As far as I am concerned, advertising is a form of pollution. It reduces the visual beauty of the environment and I don't want to see it.
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:5, Insightful)
There was never any agreement between me and the website admins that I had a limited license to view the content predicated by my looking at ads. Websites that are on the internet are free to the consumer, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:2, Informative)
What about the bandwidth they steal from me, when the serve ads I don't want?
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, it is clearly *your* problem if your website's cash flow relies on wasting my bandwidth with advertisements.
Your supposed 'right' to profit does not extend to the point where I have to bend my life around your profit model. Thanks.
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:5, Interesting)
For adverts:
- Running a web site costs money. The guys running it might even want to make a living
- hiring good writers is expensive
- Advertising money is a proven revenue source for media outlets
- subscription sites don't seem to be a popular option
but, against that:
- The adverts many sites run are overly intrusive and bandwidth-intensive
- people who block adverts probably aren't the kind of people who are going to take notice of them anyway
- just cramming more and more adverts down the throats of consumers is not a sustainable policy: evevntually, everybody will block them because it's impossible to read anything on the web otherwise.
But, sites have to be paid for somehow. Do you have any suggestions of alternative profit models for web sites?
Penny-arcade seems to get by well enough on its merchandise, advertising, freelance art work etc revenue, for example. I'm not sure how well that scales to smaller sites, though.
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:5, Insightful)
I see no adds here because they are huge flash obscenities for Microsoft FUD campaigns.
You want clickthroughs? Rethink your ad placement policies. (If I could select as a pref nothing but text adds for Linux/Unix/Hardware with _informational_ content - I might well see adds on Slashdot. And you might get paid more that the 0 you get for me at present.)
The thing that pisses me off most of course is that the ultra lightweight version still has the heavy and blotated flash/animated adverts
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:3, Insightful)
> models for web sites?
Paid subscription?
Seriously, thanks to the Internet I've now exceeded the number of advertisements I'm prepared to view in my lifetime. I now block them on *any* site that I'm likely to visit more than once or twice. Advertisements stopped having any positive effect on me many years ago, and some are now so obtrusive (i.e. personally offensive) that I not only block them - I actively avoid buying those products.
Be honest -
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:3, Interesting)
It's kinda ironic that a lot of the ads on tech sites are advertising anti-spyware/pop-ups/ads/adware/spam tools, isn't it?
Maybe if these companies agree with you that the use of these tools constitute fraud/theft, then they should stop advertising them.
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:2)
"A rich man will sell you the rope you'll use to hang him"
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:3)
I virtually never click adverts anyway, so it's not like anyone's losing my custom, but the sooner websites learn that flashing "Punch The Monkey" banners just piss visitors off, the better.
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a troll, but I'm biting even so.
We are under no obligation to play by whatever crooked-up business model a company cooks up. Unless I sign/click an agreement to view the ads, they don't have a legal leg, nor a moral one for that matter, to stand on.
They offer a web-page because they have something to sa
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:3, Insightful)
For decades, advertisers have seemingly understood that what they do is a gamble. There is absolutely no guarantee that the advertisement will be viewed, paid attention to, or even work well to sell a product. Just because this model has worked in the past does not guarantee it will continue to work for all time.
If companies involved can no longer take the risk that people may not see advertisements, then they should reconsider their
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:2)
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:2)
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a free market economy. If advertising in exchange for "free" services isn't becoming viable as a business model.. don't do it! The internet will survive without doubleclick.com and the countless "free" webmail vendors. If you gave away cars to people with "adverts" on the bonnets, and you went flat broke after giving away two cars with cola ads on them, don't complain. Don't complain if people paint over the ads, either. You gave away the cars.
Re:AdBlock is unethical (Score:2)
Or better yet, if they are on MS-crack, then I just figure I wouldnt want to work there anyway.
Re:LOL (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another disadvantage of tying the web browser to the OS. Atleast the latest versions of Opera and Firefox run on Windows 95 just fine.
Besides, I don't think IE6SP2 runs on Windows 2003 Server. What do you have to say to users of that OS?
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps I would say stop surfing the net from the server, O Master of Secure Computing.
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
Except for those that need Windows 2000 for other software they NEED for running their business, and those that need software that is incompatible with SP2 and and..
> You can't say "Well the latest version of Windows is XP, but some people decided not to upgrade so the latest version for them is 2000." It just makes no sense.
Microsoft supports Windows 2000, people pay for that support, w
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh boy, the old "You can't criticize IE's thousands of holes, because your browser has had almost ten!" argument.
Re:LOL (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Falkag.net still used by The Register (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Frames considered harmful (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately frames are also extremely useful.
I can do things with frames (and especially with iframes) that I can't do otherwise in HTML.
Admittedly this is because my personal HTML skills suck - I learned HTML in 1993 and haven't really caught up since..
However, the websites my company does its selling on are written by very proficient HTML developers and they still use iframes. They do so because it's the best tool for achieving their aims.
So feel free to stop using frames, even iframes, and block s