Hackers find clever new way to hose Google users

Hackers have found a new way to get Google to point to malicious websites with the help of unwitting websites such as TorrentReactor, ZDNet Asia and several other CNET-owned properties. As a result, more than 101,000 Google search results that appeared to lead to pages of legitimate sites actually directed end users to sites …

[Anonymous Coward]

Dancho is Bulgarian

not Dutch. Just for the record.

[John Foo]

Dancho is working in Dutchland

but born in bulgaria, yes.

</pendanticness contest>

happy that theregister quotes him, as not being a hugely known researchers, some errrm.. professionals doesn't hesitate to vaguely rephrase and repost his work.

keep up the good work Dancho, you're our primary source of information on RBN/NMMG

[Roger]

RE: Dancho is working in Dutchland

And "Dutchland" is not "Deutschland" or Germany, but The Netherlands (Holland), for those who think Denmark is the capital of Amsterdam! ;-)

[Richard Bos]

@Roger

And the Netherlands are not Holland, any more (in fact, rather less) than the UK are England.

Richard

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting

I've seen two filks lately have there sites compromised. What they have in common is that have sites with active fora, the initial breach - they got careless and access was gained by keyloggers, and the source of the malware - RBN.

[Richard Greenway]

Not Surprised

I've been seeing this from the hosting side for a few months now.

galadriel.netgroup.cz - - [03/Mar/2008:10:02:12 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/ids/index.cgi?mode=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.altaiseer-eg.com%2Far%2Farticles%2Fjed%2Fumut%2F&album=/Computing/Seattle_Robotics_Society/Robothon_2006 HTTP/1.0" 200 12973 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

galadriel.netgroup.cz - - [03/Mar/2008:10:02:13 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/ids/index.cgi?mode=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pattibus.it%2Fphplib-7.2b%2Fpages%2Filosi%2Fdohigal%2F&album=/Computing/Seattle_Robotics_Society/Robothon_2006 HTTP/1.0" 200 12973 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

galadriel.netgroup.cz - - [03/Mar/2008:10:02:15 -0800] "GET /cgi-bin/ids/index.cgi?mode=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.channelnewsperu.com%2Fimagenes%2Fpublicaciones%2Ffotos%2Fnepicu%2Fegul%2F&album=/Computing/Seattle_Robotics_Society/Robothon_2006 HTTP/1.0" 200 12973 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

Randomly changing cgi fields with the full address of compromised servers.

trying to cache in on everyones machines.

[Franklin]

Same group that's going after iPower

The attacks which are still ongoing against Web sites hosted by US Web host iPower use the same technique to mask themselves from anything but a Google search, and redirect to the same payload sites.

The basic system is straightforward. Hack into a poorly-secured Web site or inject code into an unsanitized script that redirects to traffloader.info, which is a round-Robin-style redirector that in turn redirects the unfortunate visitor to one of several malware droppers. Some of the more common ones I've seen are scanner.spyshredderscanner.com, xpantivirus.com, or sites masquerading as porn sites which try to drop a Trojan disguised as a movie codec.

In each case, the redirectors or compromised Web sites are protected by an .htaccess file that checks the browser's referrer. If it's "google.com" they redirect, if it isn't they redirect to a 404 error.

iPower has been massively compromised for months, and are still compromised; I've made lists of thousands of Web sites they host which have been hacked and had these redirectors placed on them. The fact that the techniques used are the same and the payload sites are the same strongly suggests that the folks who waltzed into iPower and pwned their servers are the same folks behind this iFrame exploit.

In this day and age, it kind of surprises me that there's still anyone left in the world who is foolish enough not to sanitize any user-supplied input anywhere on their sites--even in search boxes.

[Steve Renouf]

@Richard Bos

.... and if you refer to the ISO country listings, there is no Holland - only Netherlands