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Java Web Attack Installs Malware In RAM
snydeq writes "A hard-to-detect piece of malware that doesn't create any files on the affected systems was dropped onto the computers of visitors to popular news sites in Russia in a drive-by download attack, according to Kaspersky Lab. 'What's interesting about this particular attack is the type of malware that was installed in cases of successful exploitation: one that only lives in the computer's memory. ... It's ideal to stop the infection in its early stages, because once this type of "fileless" malware gets loaded into memory and attaches itself to a trusted process, it's much harder to detect by antivirus programs.'"
"This type of malware is rare, because it dies when the system is rebooted and the memory is cleared.
However, this wasn't a problem for the cybercriminals behind this particular attack, because of the very high probability that most victims would revisit the infected news websites, Golovanov said."
From the linked article.
It doesn't have to. It contacts the C&C server where someone presumably decides whether to install further bots or more resident exploits.
The exploit seems to be more about stealth distribution and about dropping other malware. This makes sense because if a dropper is detected as malicious, it becomes useless due to its detection. (You can safely assume anything using a dropper is malicious)
This means that anti virus software should in theory only be able to detect the actual dropped malware. Any new malware could have had a field day with this exploit because both the dropper and malware would not have been detected.
From my understanding of the article it actually dropped the Lurk trojan but I get the feeling it could drop anything the C&C wants it to.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Oh, if only that weren't true.
My wife does enterprise storage, used to do backups ... occasionally a server gets out of whack, and has all sorts of problems. Eventually she or someone on her team ends up saying "can we just reboot it?". This is usually after several days of troubleshooting and huge amounts of time spent.
It fixes a vast amount of issue in which nobody can identify what's going wrong. Though, it makes any proper form of root-cause impossible to track down. I've heard this referred to as "The Microsoft Patch".
I also know some old-school UNIX admins and mainframe guys who cringe at the notion that a reboot can be a viable way of troubleshooting/making the problem go away. Because they don't reboot unless God himself has filled out all of the right paperwork, and only then if he's got a really good reason and there are no alternatives.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
As the article points out this is a known vulnerability. And there has been a patch available since October 2011.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpuoct2011-443431.html
The infoworld article mentions that the applet used a "rogue" DLL. Where did that come from? If it didn't install any files on the system, why is there a "rogue" DLL on the system? Did it just "install" that DLL into memory also? And if the malicious applet code managed to get escalated privileges, why didn't it install something on the drive? And isn’t the term “install” being misused in the article? In fact, isn’t it true Mr. Infoworld Article person, that the alleged malware was merely “loaded” into memory? The truth is there was no flight leaving Guantanamo Bay, you doctored the flight logs, you ordered the code red, you framed OJ Simpson
FAQs are evil.
UEFI isn't going to protect the operating system from being modified, it's going to prevent the computer from booting if said operating system if it gets modified, which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what we wanted.