Apple zombies attack RealNetworks
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REALNETWORKS&#39; attempt to get Steve Jobs to open up its proprietary eyePods is getting attacked by Apple&#39;s fanatical supporters.
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The first half of 2004 saw a huge increase in zombie PCs. Also called bots, their average numbers monitored by security firm Symantec rose between January and June from under 2,000 to more than 30,000 per day - peaking at 75,000 on one day.
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One day after Symantec&#160;researchers discovered software that attacked a critical&#160;unpatched vulnerability in RealNetworks&#39; media player, Real says that a fix for the issue is imminent.&quot;Real has created a patch for RealPlayer 10.5 and RealPlayer 11 that addresses the vulnerability identified by Symantec,&quot; wrote RealNetworks General Manager of Product Development Russ Ryan, in a Friday blog posting. &quot;Real will make this patch available to users via this blog and our security update page later today.&quot;Users of RealOne Player, RealOne Player v2, and RealPlayer 10 should upgrade to the 10.5 version of the product or the RealPlayer 11 beta code and should install the patch, Ryan said.The attack exploits a flaw in an ActiveX browser helper object, software that RealPlayer employs to help users who are experiencing technical difficulties, so the PC must be using the Internet Explorer browser to be affected by this particular attack, Symantec said.The attack only works on Windows systems, RealNetworks said. Linux, Mac and RealPlayer 8 users are not affected.Attackers were using a complicated network of advertising Web sites to launch the attack from a Web site that has been spotted hosting malicious code several times over the past two years, Symantec said.&quot;The exploit itself is embedded in advertisements that were being served by 247realmedia.com,&quot; Symantec said in a note on its DeepSight threat management system. &quot;The redirection to the exploit page... was accomplished through an iFrame embedded in each advertisement.&quot;Iframe is an HTML command that allows developers to insert a second Web page into the page being viewed. It is often used by malware creators because these iFrame pages can be as small as 1 pixel, making them invisible to the naked eye.Users who do not have the patch can turn off ActiveScripting within IE as a workaround to the problem. Very technical users can also set kill bit on the Class identifier (CLSID) FDC7A535-4070-4B92-A0EA-D9994BCC0DC5 to disable the ActiveX control, Symantec said.&#160;
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RealNetworks Inc., which sells songs over the Web, said Apple Computer Inc. has altered the software for some of its market-leading iPod digital music players so that songs purchased from RealNetworks won&#39;t play.
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RealNetworks has stepped up its music &#39;war&#39; on Apple Computer--with results it clearly didn&#39;t expect.
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InfoWorld - SymantecÂ is warning users of the RealPlayer media software to be extra careful while surfing the Web.
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New Apple security updates plug a trio of flaws that could be exploited to break into Macs via Wi-Fi connections.
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(InfoWorld) - What a world. We have to fight off viruses, zombies, bots, phishing, and on and on. Can you believe how many just plain evil people there are in the world? And what is their point? Simple thievery? To prove they are smarter than the rest of us? And think of all the money that's spent on defending, as best we can, against these miscreants or in cleaning up the mess when they get the better of us? Indeed, what a waste. While viruses have appeared on mobile devices, they are, thankfully, few and far between. Part of the reason for this has been a lack of standardization of software environments on handsets, and part is due to the minimal functionality that is typical on these products. It's hard for the socially challenged to overwrite boot sectors, corrupt data, or otherwise run amok on most cell phones today. Apple's decision to limit local software execution on the iPhone is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to a fundamental fear of hackers. While the Macintosh hasn't been much of a target for the hacker community, the iPhone could be a lot more tempting. There will be far more iPhones than Macs in the world in just a few years. Plus, Apple partner AT&T doesn't need the support headaches that come with having a large number of users jamming its 800 numbers with reports of bizarre symptoms on their iPhones. Regardless, being a Web services guy, I absolutely applaud Apple for moving the Web services art forward a notch or two with a very capable platform that might indeed replace PCs for many of us over the next decade or so. We don't need to run a lot of local code to have a meaningful IT experience while on the go. Of course, the iPhone will be hacked over time, requiring updates and fixes, just as is the case with the PC. There are already reports of hackers working diligently to unlock the phone so that non-AT&T SIM cards can be used, and to avoid cellular activation so that the device would be used only Wi-Fi networks -- with VoFi services, of course. Any programmable device runs this kind of risk, and defending against unauthorized code will remain a challenge for some time to come. Which brings me to a really obscure but very important, shall we say, "opportunity" for hackers. Last year, I wrote about one of the most exciting technology developments in wireless, software-defined radio (SDR). Basically, SDR simplifies radio hardware design by replacing specialized circuitry with software. Among the many benefits of SDR are over-the-air bug fixes, the ability to add new features on demand, and dynamic reprogrammability -- turning, for example, a GSM phone into a CDMA phone or even Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or UWB or whatever on the fly. With so much software at play here, the question has to be asked: Could an SDR get hacked? Suppose someone figures out how to build a virus that quickly spreads to SDR-based handsets, disabling them or using them as jammers or worse? What if those handsets are being used for public-safety applications? This is not to say that hacking is the only vector for wireless disruptions. After all, anyone can use a jammer to disable communications in a local area, and any moron with a reasonable shortwave transmitter can pretend to be an air traffic controller. That fact that we still use an unencrypted, unauthenticated communications protocol for such a critical service boggles my mind. The FCC is rightfully concerned about SDR hacking and has issued new regulations for SDRs that mostly attempt to deal with open source software in SDR applications. There is significant concern that open source software creates specific vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. I don't think this is very likely for two reasons. First, open source isn't the same as open architectures. Each product vendor would of necessity keep certain elements of their implementation secret, locking out all but the most determined hackers. But secondly, and more importantly, the real issue is how to protect individual phones from ever loading harmful software. We already have pretty good techniques for this from the PC world, and there are many effective approaches to solving this particular security concern. It could even be argued that the technical scrutiny that comes with open source actually enhances security and integrity; the real issue is controlling what software, open source or not, gets onto the mobile device. As I noted in my last column, the big issue with SDR isn't hackers or security: It is the need to lower the power demands of SDR implementations so that they have a prayer of running on batteries. The road to SDR-based handsets isn't at all paved yet, but open source is a relatively minor concern.
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RealNetworks survived the dot-com collapse and an assault from Microsoft. Now it's trying to remake itself into a provider of paid Internet content.
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_ Apple Computer Inc. has quietly started to block technology created by RealNetworks Inc. to get around the iPod music player&#39;s copy-protection armor.
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RealNetworks&#39; campaign to grab digital-music market share away from Apple&#39;s iTunes service -- most recently, with cut-rate, 49-cent song downloads -- is raising the ire of Apple loyalists. A petition placed online by Real was swamped with ...
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These armies of zombie PCs are used by cybercriminals for sending spam. Part of a series on hot security topics.
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Blog: Underground sites fuel interest in breaking Apple's mobile security.
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iNuisance Miscreants have created a proof-of-concept sample of adware that targets Apple Mac OS X users.â¦
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CUPERTINO, Calif. Apple Computer is trying to stop RealNetworks from taking a bite out of the iPod market. Apple is blocking the technology used by RealNetworks Harmony music downloading service.
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InfoWorld - Trend Micro announced a new service to help large organizations and Internet service providers (ISPs) fight networks of zombie machines, known as "botnets."
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Organized gangs are increasingly using networks of zombie PCs to launch attempts to make money, according to VeriSign.