Security experts: Super Bowl infection widespread
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InfoWorld - Security experts are finding an increasing number of Web sites hosting malicious JavaScript code first&#160;detected on Super Bowl-related sites&#160;last week.
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A river runs through it &#151; and that's a security problem for this city's first Super Bowl. From jet skis to cruise ships, watercraft regularly ply the St. Johns River, a federal waterway that runs right alongside Alltel Stadium.
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To a quarterback, a Bill Belichick-designed defense can be like a computer virus. Once it gets into your system, it can cause long-term contamination.
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(InfoWorld) - They just don't make malware like they used to. Or at least like they did earlier this year. Even low-quality malware, however, is taxing the resources of security companies, since it is being detected in ever-higher numbers. Over the last six months, the technical creativity of malware has fallen along with the ability to cause massive damage, such as that created by the MyDoom and Sasser worms of years past, wrote Alexander Gostev, senior virus analyst for Kaspersky Lab, in a recent report. Gostev's lab intermittently sees highly technical malware, but most is "the same unending stream of Trojans, viruses and worms," he wrote. In many cases, hackers simply take existing malware and create variants, by tweaking the older code to evade antivirus software. At times, the process is simple trial and error. Malware writers use online scanners such as Virustotal , which check to see if their new code will be detected by antivirus software, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure. If the code is detectable, they can make a slight modification and run it through the scanner again. "I'd like to tell you that we're winning this war," Hypponen said. "But frankly, I'm not so sure. We need new kinds of solutions." Because much of the code is not new, it tends to remain effective for shorter periods of time before antivirus companies detect it. Still, the time it takes to identify and create a signature for a new virus, which can range from a few minutes to a few hours, is often long enough for hackers to infect computers. "Antivirus companies are working at the limits of their capabilities in terms of speed," Gostev wrote. To be sure, some malicious hackers are doing creative work. This year saw some sophisticated phishing attacks, and virus writers have been branching into relatively new areas like instant messaging and social networking sites, noted Christopher Boyd, security research manager for FaceTime Communications. But the trend overall, he said, has been "quantity over quality." Kaspersky Lab in Moscow is on the front lines of the battle. Its analysts added 2,000 signatures to their database in January 2005. Last month they added 10,000 signatures -- a five-fold increase, said Stanislav Shevchenko, head of the lab. The virus analysts work 12-hours shifts, pulling up screen after screen of rolling lines of code. Automated tools analyze some pieces of malware, but human analysis is still needed for others. A good analyst should process an average piece of malware within 5 minutes, Shevchenko said. But some of the rarer, more creative code is harder to crack. Polymorphic viruses -- ones that can change their byte sequences to throw off antivirus software -- can take up to a week to analyze, Shevchenko said. The signatures are added to a database used by Kaspersky's antivirus engine, which is licensed by other security vendors such as Juniper Networks, ClearSwift , and F-Secure. The increase in the volume of malicious code can be attributed in part to the impunity enjoyed by malware writers, said Eugene Kaspersky, head of antivirus research. Despite efforts by law enforcement agencies to strengthen international cooperation, most malware writers are never punished. "It's quite safe for them," Kaspersky said. "If they are clever enough, there is almost no risk for them at the moment." The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the country's KGB intelligence agency, frequently ask Kaspersky Lab for information, said Kaspersky spokesman Timur Tsoriev. The FSB, however, approaches Kaspersky less these days since the agency has bolstered its in-house expertise, Kaspersky said. Kaspersky said his lab focuses less on finding the root of criminal activity than protecting the company's customers. But the burden of rising online criminal activity directly impacts security companies, he said. "If there is no help from the police and if they don't reduce the number of criminals, I'm afraid the detection for all antivirus products will go down," Kaspersky said.
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An IBM study expects viruses to crawl into cars and cell phones. Also:  Research finds more people banking online and the trend growing.... The Medicare budget swells past expectations.... and more.
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Security experts warn that virus writers could be preparing to create havoc using a bug in the way that Windows handles images.
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An unusually virulent virus could be behind an outbreak of meningitis that led to the hospitalization of six seventh-grade football players in Cy-Fair ISD, school officials and infectious-disease experts said Wednesday.
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British experts warn some people involved in spreading computer viruses are exploiting the worldwide interest in British soccer super star David Beckham.
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One wondered if the events of last week had penetrated the normally iron-clad concentration of the New England Patriots.
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(InfoWorld) - Security experts are finding an increasing number of Web sites hosting malicious JavaScript code firstÂ detected on Super Bowl-related sitesÂ last week. Sites covering topics ranging from health care to government have been hacked to host the JavaScript, SANS Internet Storm Center Director Marcus H. Sachs wrote on the SANS blog, listing some of the hacked sites. "System administrators might want to check their network flow logs for any traffic to these sites and for any traffic to the five sites that hosted the hostile JavaScript," Sachs wrote. The attack targets two known vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Windows operating systems, for which patches were issued in April and January. Computers with unpatched software are vulnerable to the attack. If one of the hacked sites is visited, the JavaScript code directs the browser to a second Web server, based in China, and tries to install a Trojan Horse downloader and password-stealing program on the victim's computer. Initially, the exploit appeared isolated to Web sites related to U.S. football, as hackers tried to capitalize on the surge of traffic to sites concerning the Super Bowl sporting event, which was played on Sunday. The site of the Miami Dolphins team, and another site for its stadium, were hacked, although they were eventually cleaned up. Security company WebsenseÂ reported the problem on the stadium site on Friday. Websense recommended that users stay away from the affected sites until they had been cleaned up. Â
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Virus infection Officials at the US Centers for Disease Control were left dealing with a different kind of outbreak last week after hackers planted a virus on the agency's websiteâ¦
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Russian roulette Webpages of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg, Russia, were infected by malware earlier this week. The US consulate site was caught up in a much larger hack attack and is not thought to have been targeted as such.â¦
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The anti-virus software makers are going to have a very busy year ahead, it appears. The number of attacks on smartphones is increasing at an alarming pace.
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The UK's MRSA problem may be due to the emergence of highly contagious clones of the superbug, says a scientist.
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Malware arrives in the form of a game, disables antivirus protection.
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As infected images plant back doors on PCs, experts see possibility of virus too.
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Virus attack occurs just as PC vulnerability is discovered.