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 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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Blog: Thousands of Web sites worldwide now host links to malicious code servers.
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Brian Russell had no idea what hit him. A guy who routinely tackles 250-pound running backs head-on and occasionally gets pulverized by rampaging 350-pound NFL linemen for a living nearly saw his season end because of a microscopic germ. The Cleveland Browns safety was flattened by a staph infection that hospitalized him during the preseason.
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The New England Patriots' bruising  defense has put the Super Bowl champions in position to become  one of the NFL's greatest teams.
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Get INQ7 breaking news on your Smart mobile phone in the Philippines. Send INQ7 BREAKING to 386. PARIS, France -- A virus that spies on keystrokes and downloads passwords and bank account details is circulating
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Security experts are finding an increasing number of Web sites hosting malicious JavaScript code first detected on Super Bowl-related sites.
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Virus attack occurs just as PC vulnerability is discovered.
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Infected computers can be used as &quot;zombies&quot; to send spam or launch attacks on Web sites. Spreading Trojans via chat rooms is not unusual.
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Security firms are warning about a virus that tries to cash in on interest in David Beckham.
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Spying on the field. Spying on the web. First, the New England Patriots used surveillance equipment to spy on the New York Jets. And now they've used a Massachusetts state court to spy on up to 13,000 people who use StubHub.com.â¦
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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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Killing a virus attack before it becomes damaging is something of a holy grail in today&#39;s security environment. That&#39;s because most viruses today are distributed through attachments to e-mail
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Hackers reprogrammed the Web site for the Super Bowl stadium so it would automatically load a malicious script, security firm said.
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If criminals were to target unsecured wireless routers, they could create an attack that could piggyback across thousands of Wi-Fi networks in urban areas like Chicago or New York City, according to researchers at Indiana University.The researchers estimate that a Wi-Fi attack could take over 20,000 wireless routers in New York City within a two-week period, with most of the infections occurring within the first day.&quot;The issue is that most of these routers are installed out of the box very insecurely,&quot; said Steven Myers, an assistant professor at Indiana University, who published the paper in November, along with researchers from the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Torino, Italy,The researchers theorize that attack would work by guessing administrative passwords and then instructing the routers to install new worm-like firmware, which would in turn cause the infected router to attack other devices in its range.Because there are so many closely connected Wi-Fi networks in most urban areas, the attack could hop from router to router for many miles in some cities.The team used what is known as the Susceptible Infected Removed (SIR) model to track the growth of this attack. This methodology is typically used to estimate things like influenza outbreaks, but it has also been used to predict things like computer virus infections, Myers said.Although the researchers did not develop any attack code that would be used to carry out this infection, they believe it would be possible to write code that guessed default passwords by first entering the default administrative passwords that shipped with the router, and then by trying a list of one million commonly used passwords, one after the other. They believe that 36 percent of passwords can be guessed using this technique.Even some routers that use encryption could be cracked, if they use the popular WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) algorithm, which security experts have been able to crack for years now. Routers that were encrypted using the more-secure WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard were considered impossible to infect, Myers said.Myers&#39; model is based on data compiled from the Wireless Geographic Logging Engine (WiGLE), a volunteer-run effort to map Wi-Fi networks around the world, which has over 10 million networks in its database.Using this data, they were able to map out large networks of made out of Wi-Fi routers that were each no more than 45 meters (49 yards) from the network -- in other words, close enough for an infection to spread. The largest such network in New York included 36,807 systems; in Boston it was 15,899; and in Chicago: 50,084.Because New York is such a dense city with a relatively low percentage (25.8 percent, according to the researchers) of encrypted routers, it was particularly susceptible to this type of attack. San Francisco, on the other hand, where 40.1 percent of routers are encrypted and which had a lower density of routers was less susceptible.Myers says that because the attack would be technically complex, he doubts that criminals will attempt it any time soon. There are simply too many other, easier ways to take over computers, he said.Still, he thinks hardware makers should take note. &quot;The bigger point for developers and people making wireless information technology is to realize that there are serious security issues.&quot;
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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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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.