DIY kits dumb down phishing
448789
9 out of 10 crooks use ready-made code Phishing kits are helping to dumb down the process of creating fraudulent websites. Back in the day, setting up a bogus facsimile of a banking site required a modicum of programming skills. No more.â¦
418284
GADFLY ALREADY the internet age has given us 'phishing', when criminals use emails to persuade you to give them your bank details.  Now it seems we have the less crooked but nonetheless enraging online experience of 'philfing'  an acronym for 'purposely hiding what I'm looking for'.
591513
Phreaks, spoofers and spammers want to invade your home computer, and the tricks of their trade include airsnarfs, wabbits and fork bombs.
79963
Web gateway filtering specialist Finjan is reporting a new toolkit that uses randomized JavaScript to stay hidden from virus crawlers and deliver its payload via compromised Web sites.Dubbed by Finjan's Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC) as the "Random JS Toolkit," the malware development package is allowing attackers to create threats that only attempt to victimize an individual computer in the same manner a single time to protect against discovery by anti-virus systems and researchers' automated "crawlers."By dynamically changing the JavaScript employed to deliver each variant of attack being created, and by using random file names that are only delivered to the same machine or IP address once, Finjan researchers said the malware authoring package is meant to avoid the programs used by AV researchers to find new threats emerging on the Web.Typically when automated crawler programs come across new attack samples, they return to the threats' source URLs to verify their names and characteristics and to create signature files that allow their products to block the programs -- or they enter the sites onto so-called blacklists of compromised domains.However, once a machine has been infected with an attack made using the Random JS Toolkit, the threat will recognize that the machine has already been targeted and won't attempt to download it again, thereby thwarting efforts to identify or track the exploits, Finjan experts contend.During the month of December 2007, Finjan estimates that more than 10,000 individual sites were compromised with attacks built using the Random JS Toolkit. Most of the URLs serving as distribution points for the attacks were legitimate sites that had been hijacked, the company said.Among the infected sites were some that would qualify as well-known, highly trusted domains, said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of Finjan.Ben-Itzhak said the toolkit serves as a prime example of the types of tactics he expects leading-edge malware authors to utilize more frequently in the coming year."We've found the initial 10,000 sites, but we're sure that there are many more that have already been infected. When we can find this number of exploits, it is clear that this must be a very significant attack that has affected a lot of people," he said. "Using the combination of techniques available in this toolkit, the threats that are being created can become very powerful and stay alive to infect people for longer periods of time."Among the types of malware infections being served up using the toolkit, Finjan has observed everything from Trojan viruses and keystroke loggers to botnet recruiting programs, he said.For its part, Finjan's real-time code inspection technology can defend against such threats because it eschews the use of traditional virus signatures or blacklists in favor of constant monitoring for any malware activity coming across a network armed with one of its devices, Ben-Itzhak maintains.Rival AV vendors, including Symantec, contend that features such as the market leader's recently developed "generic exploit prevention," based on behavioral cues, should also be able to isolate and defend against such emerging attacks.Unlike the widespread iFrame attacks that proliferated across the Web during 2007, threats created using the Random JS Toolkit will also be much harder for security researchers to track down because they do not lead back to central sites where the actual malware code itself is hosted, Finjan maintains.Since the involved malware code is loaded directly on a site, and it won't attempt infect the same computer or IP address twice, traditional URL blacklisting and signature-based techniques will likely prove futile against the attack, the company said.However, from what the security appliance vendor can deduce, Ben-Itzhak said the firm believes there is only one malware group currently using the toolkit."From what we can tell, all the information flowing back from the compromised sites is heading to the same server," he said. "This indicates that there is probably only one group controlling this malware code thus far, and that they are probably being very successful; this is just another step forward for the criminals involved to continue to improve their attack methods and remain undetected."Ben-Itzhak said that the involved server is not one that matches any of the company's lists of machines controlled by well-known malware authoring groups such as the Russian Business Network. The server the company is tracking was originally located in Europe, but has recently been moved to China -- and likely will continue to be moved around to avoid detection, according to the expert.Most of the data the security company has seen being sent to the server has been related to online banking username and password data, he said.As part of its investigation, Finjan discovered that one of the Web properties infected with the randomized JavaScript attacks was an online advertising network that serves up as many as 14 million online banner ads per week. The security device maker reported that unnamed company was informed and is currently working to clean out its systems.
275950
Blog: Writer is duped for the first time ever by a phishing attack; feels violated and ashamed
517091
Fixes made for "critical" JavaScript vulnerability in the Firefox browser and the SeaMonkey application suite.
417838
New features designed to alert users if the site they are visiting is legitimate or a phishing site.
86222
In brief Exploit circulating for unpatched vuln
738631
Fraudsters have developed phishing emails capable of automatically stealing bank log-in details without requiring users to click on a website link, email filtering firm MessageLabs warns.
704920
Do-it-yourself phishing kits are freely available on the Internet, a security firm said Thursday, and they will lead to more scams sent to online consumers.
312864
An invitation to chat by Webcam could come with malicious code.
228635
A whopping 70% of respondents say they&#39;ve been duped, and 15% admit to revealing personal information. By Thomas Claburn. Phishing could cost consumers $500 million this year, according to a new study conducted
633181
Gareth Heyes has a new post today talking about one of the vulnerable values in the $_SERVER superglobal - PHP_SELF.   I thought it might be a good idea to gather a few test cases demonstrating the problem. Why PHP allows these URL's is beyond me and it wouldn't take much work to filter out these malicious URL's in the PHP code.   He provides four test cases to show how simple it is to abuse - one using a HTTP header, another pushing XSS through, the third mentions search pages and the fourth a direct code injection.   You can download the code here.
42081
Blog: Popular add-ons could have their update process hijacked by man-in-the-middle attacks.
80272
Tool that identifies sites pretending to be connected to banks, eBay and more could help leave "phishing" scammers dead in the water.
438186
For your next DIY project, pick up an old Pentium computer and a CompactFlash card and build a custom router/firewall.
285360
Blog: Researcher shows how URLs can be spoofed and content arbitrary within Safari 3.0 beta.