Monster.com Malware Tags Another Site

bl8n8r writes "The first wave of problems for Monster.com came in the form of malware as recruiters cluelessly pointed trojaned Windows systems into Monster's database. The incident reportedly gleaned more than 1.6 million records from the job search site's database. The second incident followed two days later in the form of an infected Monster.com server pharming out malware by way of advertisements hosted on its websites. The latest incident now shows jobseekers using USAJobs are also at risk from the pharmed Monster trojan. The worst part is Monster.com seems to shrug it off with: 'As is the case with many companies that maintain large databases of information, Monster is from time to time subject to illegal attempts to extract information from its database. Despite ongoing analysis, the scope of this illegal activity is impossible to pinpoint.'"

Comments

Here, I'll pinpoint the scope for them:

[Ant P.]

SELECT * FROM customers;
I'm curious to know how they could screw up a simple thing like database security to the point where some windows laptop on their network can just connect and do the above.

Trollish submitter

[packetmon]

The worst part is Monster.com seems to shrug it off with: 'As is the case with many companies that maintain large databases of information Funny how they shrugged it off:

Earlier this month, Monster discovered [a] a malicious code that attempted to harvest stolen email addresses from its database and transfer them to a server in Ukraine. The hackers then sent out phishing emails that claimed to be prospective employers offering a work-from-home job that asked for access to the user's bank account. Monster responded by notifying these job seekers that their contact records had been downloaded illegally and is now working with law enforcement officials and the appropriate regulatory agencies [b]. Monster also revealed that this incident was not the first time the company's database had been the target of criminal activity.

The company says that to boost its security measures it is implementing new robust capabilities for worldwide monitoring and surveillance of site traffic, reviewing and tightening all site access policies and controls and launching a series of targeted initiatives to protect job seeker contact information.

Source

[a] Monster discovered: Did you note that Monster themselves noticed the infiltration. Wasn't posted to a full disclosure list which means they caught it on their own for a change. Give them that credit

[b] Monster initiated contacting those affected and working with LEA's. This didn't come to light in the same fashion as say with what happened at LinkedIn. Linkedin spurns bug bounty hunter. So why post such a trollish statement as "monster shrugged it off". There should be a mechanism to moderate those who post articles.