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Trust No Site
Chris Crum
Staff Writer
2006-05-10
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Security researcher Roger Thompson advises against placing so much trust in so-called "trusted websites".
Thompson of Exploit Prevention Labs is referring to sites like Google, Yahoo, and MSN - or more specifically their search results. He points out that most people feel fairly safe when clicking on links from the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) , or visiting other "trusted" sites.
"Trusted web sites can't always be trusted," says Thompson. "Cyber criminals are now finding ways to commandeer trusted web sites and use those sites to push driveby downloads, rootkits and other malicious exploits onto the computers of unsuspecting web site visitors."
Exploit Prevention Labs has this story to share:
Recently, Thompson discovered a web site in the U.K. operated by a plasterer. The plasterer, hoping to promote his business on the web, had created a web site using freely available tools. In this age of open source and free software, many web site owners take advantage of free tools. Unbeknownst to the plasterer, however, one of the freeware tools he downloaded, which allowed him to place a web counter on his site, was inadvertently exposing visitors to malicious crimeware.
As Thompson discovered, this free web counter had a second, hidden function. When someone visited the plasterer's site, the web counter updated the visitor count by accessing a web server in Slovakia. Nothing wrong with that, says Thompson. But then the Slovakian server surreptitiously contacts a server in Colorado, grabbing a piece of crimeware that was downloaded on to the unsuspecting web site visitor's computer. This crimeware took advantage of a security vulnerability in the Windows operating system know as Windows Metafile, or ‘WMF' by security researchers, that allows cyber criminals to download software onto a web site visitors' PC.
The moral of the story: there are vulnerabilities discovered all of the time, and sometimes it takes a while for them to be patched. Be cautious.
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About the Author:
Chris Crum is a staff writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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