Rock Phish gang adds second punch to phishing attacks

April 21, 2008, 09:02 AM —  IDG News Service — 


Bookmark and Share




A notorious online gang known for its prolific phishing
operations has expanded its means of attack, potentially putting more PC users
at risk of losing personal data.

The Rock Phish gang surfaced around 2004, becoming well-known for its expertise
in setting up phishing sites, which seek to trick people into divulging sensitive
data, as well as for selling phishing kits designed for less technical cybercriminals.

Now, the phishing sites linked with the Rock Phish gang are being rigged with
a drive-by download, a type of attack that can infect a PC with malicious software
without any interaction by the user, researchers from vendor RSA said Monday.

The one-two punch means that even people who go to the phishing site but aren't
fooled into inputting their personal details could still be infected, wrote
Uriel Maimon, a senior researcher, on RSA's blog.

The phishing Web site tries to exploit any software vulnerabilities, and if
it finds one, will then load the Zeus Trojan onto the PC. Zeus is particularly
dangerous: it can collect data on forms, take screen shots, pilfer passwords
from browsers and remotely control the computer, Maimon wrote.

Zeus also comes in at least 150 flavors. One of the phishing kits being sold
now for US$700 masks how Zeus appears to security programs. That kit uses a
binary generator, which creates a new binary file for Zeus for every kit.

Antivirus programs uses signatures, or data files, that describe what malicious
programs "look" like in order to be detected. But creating new binaries
can render security programs blind. Most of the popular antivirus programs can't
detect the variants.

"These files are radically different from each other, making them notoriously
difficult for antivirus or security software to detect," Maimon wrote.

IDG News Service

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Free books

Essential JavaFX
Get started building rich Web apps quickly with an introduction to the power of JavaFX key features -- scene node graphs, nodes as components, the coordinate system, layout options, colors and gradients, custom classes with inheritance, animation, binding, and event handlers.Enter now!

The Nomadic Developer
Consulting can be hugely rewarding, but it's easy to fail if you are unprepared. To succeed, you need a mentor who knows the lay of the land. Aaron Erickson is your mentor, and this is your guidebook. Enter now!

Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace