New IM Worm Installs Own Web Browser

Aquafinality writes "A new IM worm discovered recently takes the novel step of installing its own web browser onto the victims PC. Ironically titled "The Safety Browser", its default settings actually make your PC less secure - switching on pop-ups, changing your home page and hijacking your desktop with a looped music track that plays every time you switch your computer on. It's clear people cannot resist clicking "yes" to anything they're presented with via IM - with this in mind, what on Earth can we do so stop the spread of garbage like the above? To put it another way, will reducing the amount of potential "suckers" out there dissuade the bad guys from coming up with ever-more elaborate ideas such as this latest scam? Or is IM safety a lost cause?"

Comments

IM safety?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Or is IM safety a lost cause?

It's very hard to stop people executing something thats sent to them by someone they know - but for other vector methods, perhaps people should consider an IM client that doesn't include activeX

Anyway, mildly interesting, the worm makes no attempt to hide iteself with a "You are beaten, it is useless to resist" desktop paper (!) and music on startup (from TFA) Worse still, music starts to blare out of your PC. Not just any old music - bad music. Bad looped music, with screeching guitars and awful drum n' bass beats.

But not to worry XP SP2 users, you're protected.... again from TFA:

Some "good" news, however - SP2 seems to prevent this music from playing in the background.

snigger.... :-)

I know where this is headed

[theCat]

Next month, an IM worm will install not just a browser, but an entire operating system. It will be Linux, but it will be setup to give the worm owner complete remote ops. It will have basic mail, IM , web browsing and word processing all via the usual open source tools, and will be made to look something like Windows. And 90% of the people who wake up to find this new OS running on their system will simply use it.

You KNOW they will. That's the level of what we're talking about.

For one thing people have become accustomed to random stuff showing up on updates and upgrades. The remore operatior will simply launch a splashscreen that says "A gift from Microsoft for your loyalty!" and people will go nuts. For another thing, there is a good deal of evidence accumulated over the many years of this malware war that the users who are keeping malware authors in business are total noobs. Many are developmentally disabled, or are children, or are computer phobes who avert their eyes when the machines "does something odd". Some are simply dumb as cabbages. They click "yeah sure, pwn me" on every dialog box because they are functioning as part of the attached peripherals a NOT an intelligent user.

No, I'm not bitter. I'm not being sarcastic. I've woken to the reality. This is our world, and we white hats are just a liitle slow on the uptake is all. What this suggests about computer ownership (like maybe you need an operator's license, as required with radio broadcasting, if you are going to traffic in the public sphere) is probably the next frontier of the discussion, that's all.

Re:Again, is it IM's fault?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I mostly agree with your post - and you put things well, but:

Probably not, because the typical default access for a linux user is unprivileged (I've been working intensively in the linux environment, and I'll bet I've not been logged in as a privileged user (i.e., root) more than two or three times a year during that span).

I'm not sure how long user privilege separation is going to continue to be the great protection it is now, once the majority of desktop users have it. Consider a single user desktop with privilege separation (linux, vista (supposedly) or os x):

1) Malware downloaded & executed by dumb user.
2) Malware sets itself to start at that user's privileges when the user logs in.
3) Malware can do many things at malware level at least when user is logged in (including periodically checking its update server for local privilege escalation exploits it can run).

We're about to enter an age of smarter malware, that takes its time getting root, and keeps a low profile (maybe a little keylogging here or there) until it does... you read it here first :-)

Re:Again, is it IM's fault?

[Jeremi]

I think that things like selinux will really help, keeping programmes from doing things which they are not meant to do.

I think using virtual machines as sandboxes could go a long way towards improving security also. Imagine a distro with a super-locked-down secure OS that only ever runs a single app, which is a virtual machine app (VMWare, Xen, whatever). The user does everything inside this virtual machine's guest OS, and never installs or runs any other software on the host OS.

With that setup, it would be easy to "checkpoint" the state of the system and restore it whenever things have gone wrong (due to malware, user mistakes, whatever). (A clever diff-based mechanism might be able to make OS-state saves/restores fast enough to be done automatically in the background, say once a day). Even if the guest OS was completely compromised by malware, it would still be impossible for the malware to prevent the user from using the (uncorrupted) host OS to "rewind" the computer back to before the infection occurred. The host OS could also keep an audit trail of what happened when inside the guest OS, to help the user find out where things went wrong.

make a friendly worm...

[AlgorithMan]

well - just make a "nice worm" that tells you

"hi, your computer is obviously insecure - may I install
[] firefox
[] thunderbird
[] AVG free (Antivirus)
[] hijackthis
[] and one of the following freeware firewalls: [insert firewalls here]
for you? - P.S. I'll install the software from official mirrors, no faked, phishing software - if I wanted to harm you, I could have done this already
[No] [Yes]

may I also interest you in
[] OpenOffice
[] miranda
[] bsplayer
[] ...
[No] [Yes]

May I recommend myself to your friends?
[No] [Yes]

thank you for your interest
I'll remove myself from your system now. goodbye!
[OK]

I think most people that stick with ms software do this because they have no clue how to install alternative software (seriously - my family uses PCs for 14 years now and still they call me and ask me how to install this and that software) so make a "worm" that assists you in making your pc more secure (and shows you that you need it at the same time) maybe put in links to small, easy-to-understand "getting started" sites...