New Malware Overwrites Software Updaters

itwbennett writes "Researchers at Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (BKIS), a Vietnamese security company, have found a new type of malware that 'masks itself as an updater for Adobe Systems' products and other software such as Java,' wrote BKIS analyst Nguyen Cong Cuong in a post on the company's blog. BKIS showed screenshots of a variant of the malware that imitates Adobe Reader version 9 and overwrites the AdobeUpdater.exe, which regularly checks in with Adobe to see if a new version of the software is available."

Comments

i had a bout of paranoia where i imagined this

[circletimessquare]

about a month ago, while going through the motions of updating java one day (clicking on all those security warnings, running the little interface), i thought: to hack a system, why not just copy this stupid little interface and have the user gleefully click through all of the little security warnings?

and now my fleeting paranoia is reality: you can't trust the updaters anymore

which makes this news from two days ago all the more prescient:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/03/24/189248

"Microsoft To Distribute Third-Party Patches"

furthermore, i despise the fact that just because i have quicktime and adobe and java installed, i have to always have these useless potentially bogus processes constantly running in the background doing nothing but waiting for their once monthly updates

it makes much better sense to have ALL software updated through one repository which, obviously, has to be microsoft

now microsoft is responsible for a secure update process, you don't have to worry about 9 different third party update mechanisms and have them constantly running, and finally, the big fat shiny nail in the coffin: you don't have to worry about this malware posing as an updater

a negative being: now you're pretty much sending microsoft a manifest of all of your installed software every time you get an update, but i see no way around that without this new hack entering the picture

Re:i had a bout of paranoia where i imagined this

[CranberryKing]

It is surprising that MS hasn't done this yet. I don't think every app should be required to go through through a package manager, but it just makes sense for the big ones. GNU/Linux has had this for years. And I've had it with Adobe.

Oh, for the good old days...

[DigitalSorceress]

I used to sit there and think, "well, if I were a criminal, I'd do this, that and the other" (this that and the other being stuff like replacing updaters, faking out security software so it couldn't update, having multiple processes that "watchdogged" each other, yada yada). Nowadays, they're doing that shit and a whole lot more I never thought of.

Once your system is comprised, it's pretty much never a good idea to trust it until its been completely rebuilt from the ground up.

I'm currently in the middle of doing this for a friend. Whatever the heck he had was so dug in that I had him replace the hard drive, reinstall a fresh OS, patch up, reinstall apps from disk, and now I'm restoring his user data from the original drive (carefully with auto-run disabled) mounted from a USB enclosure.

Re:I'm torned

[plover]

I completely neutered my copy of Adobe. I removed all the plug-in DLLs that did stuff I don't need or care about, or that were a security threat: accessibility, web linking, etc. I shut off Javascript execution in the preferences panel. And I disabled and removed everything related to Adobe Updater. If I feel like updating it, I will. (Hint: I don't.)

I can still view ordinary documents without trouble. I can't "use" a form in the way that some companies have replaced their web browsers with Adobe front ends, but that's OK by me -- it's not required for my day job, and I certainly don't have to give fools like that my personal business.

As a bonus, Adobe Reader launches much faster than before.