Monthly Archive for September, 2009
Mrs. Krebs and I were enjoying a relaxing, quiet morning last Saturday in our living room -- silently bonding with our respective laptops propped on our knees -- when she nearly jumped off of the sofa, shouting, "Uh oh! It's one of those fake virus things popping up! WhatdoIdo!?!?" It occurred to me as I reached for her computer that most people probably wouldn't know what to do should they stumble across a hacked or malicious site that tries to frighten and corral visitors into downloading and purchasing some rogue anti-virus product (a.k.a. "scareware"). The misleading pop-ups and animations about supposed security and privacy threats are unnerving, to be sure, and can be awfully convincing to the unwary. Typically, they are the result of scripts stitched into legitimate, hacked Web sites, or into banner ads that scam artists stealthily submit to some online ad networks. It is tempting to try
You know you've attracted the attention of online troublemakers when they start using their malicious software to taunt you by name. Such is apparently the case with the latest version of Koobface, a worm that spreads on Facebook, Twitter and other Web 2.0 sites and turns infected systems into bots that can be used for a variety of improper and possibly criminal purposes. According to an analysis performed on the malware by researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the latest version references a domain that begins with an expletive and ends with ...briankrebs.com (if you figure it out please DO NOT visit this Web site, as you could pick up a malicious program). I suppose I should be flattered, as I'm in good company: According to the researchers, this Koobface variant also forces infected systems to call out to another domain that drops an expletive in the middle
