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Drive-By Pharming In the Wild

An anonymous reader writes "Symantec reported Tuesday that the first case of drive-by pharming, in which a hacker changes the DNS settings on a customer's broadband router or wireless access point and directs the link to a fraudulent Web site, has been observed in the wild. The first drive-by pharming attack has been observed against a Mexican bank: 'It's associated with an e-mail pretending to be from a legitimate Spanish-language e-greeting card company, Gusanito.com,' says Symantec Security Response principal researcher Zulfikar Ramzan. Inside the e-mail is an HTML image tag but instead of displaying images, it sends a request to the home router to tamper with it."

5 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Pfft by Kalriath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, I suppose this "hack" fails entirely on any router which... well, either has a default password or (like any high end router) doesn't use HTTP basic authentication? No worries for me, my 3com is safe as houses.

    --
    For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
  2. Enough with the default passwords. by GreggBz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If Bioware can sell $30 software with unique CD-Keys printed on the inside of each jewel case, why can't Linksys sell $40 routers with unique admin passwords printed on each manual. Or better yet, make the default password the last 6 digits of the LAN side MAC address, that can't be terribly hard to manufacture.

    Seriously, you could even honestly market them as "more secure."

  3. Re:Captcha? by cheater512 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or maybe force users to change the password.

    Which one makes more sense? :P

  4. Idiots with default passwords get pwnd, news at 11 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    nothing to see here... move along, folks

  5. Re:Fankly, I'm suprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I presume you're being funny. What you're doing there is just as likely to land you in the hoosegow as a suspected terrorist or something of that nature as it is to make you money. This is not a time in U.S. history where being a Good Samaritan is even remotely a good idea.