OpenDNS Exec Calls Google-Dell Browser Tool 'Spyware'
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Confilct arises over a bundled tool that redirects Dell PC users who mistype URLs to a Dell-branded page of Google ads.
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In ordering a New Hampshire man to stop sending spyware that takes over parts of a user&#39;s computer, a federal judge has sent a warning shot at spammers in the United States.
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By Phil Mulkins, Tulsa World, Okla.  Sep. 15--Dear Action Line: My kids think I'm an old fuddy-dud and bought me a computer with Internet service to "modernize me." On Monday, you said there were sneaks out there using "spyware" to steal my identity.
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Security researchers have released code showing how a pair of widely used technologies could be misused to take control of a victim&#39;s Web browsing experience.The code, published over the weekend by researchers Adrian Pastor and Petko Petkov, exploits features in two technologies: The UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) protocol, which is used by many operating systems to make it easier for them to work with devices on a network, and Adobe Systems&#39; Flash multimedia software.By tricking a victim into viewing a malicious Flash file, an attacker could use UPnP to change the primary DNS server used by the router to find other computers on the Internet. This would give the attacker a virtually undetectable way to redirect the victim to fake Web sites. For example, a victim with a compromised router could be taken to the attacker&#39;s Web server, even if he typed Citibank.com directly into the Web browser navigation bar.&quot;The most malicious of all malicious things is to change the primary DNS server,&quot; the researchers wrote. &quot;That will effectively turn the router and the network it controls into a zombie which the attacker can take advantage of whenever they feel like it.&quot;Because so many routers support UPnP, the researchers believe that &quot;99 percent of home routers are vulnerable to this attack.&quot;In fact, many other types of UPnP devices, such as printers, digital entertainment systems, and cameras are also potentially at risk, they added in a Frequently Asked Questions Web page explaining their research.The attack is particularly worrisome because it is cross-platform -- any operating system that supports Flash is susceptible -- and because it is based on features of UPnP and Flash, not bugs that could be easily fixed by Adobe or the router vendors.Users could avoid this attack by turning UPnP off on their routers, where it is normally enabled by default, but this would cause a variety of popular applications, such as IM software, games, and Skype, to break and require manual configuration on the router.Adobe could make changes to Flash to mitigate the problem, but attackers could most likely also launch this attack using another technique, known as DNS pinning, said Aviv Raff, a researcher who has also blogged about the attack.&quot;This is a critical issue,&quot; he said in an IM interview. &quot;People should turn off UPnP in their devices, and vendors should put UPnP disabled by default in the devices they deliver.&quot;Although this could make life difficult for nontechnical users, Raff believes it would be worth the effort. &quot;It&#39;s better than having your traffic owned by malicious people,&quot; he said.However, another security expert said that turning off UPnP would be overkill, considering that online criminals have not even begun using this attack. &quot;Look... if you get hit by a meteor, it&#39;s devastating,&quot; said Roger Thompson, chief research officer with Grisoft. &quot;But no one goes around building meteor shelters.&quot;
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New program inspects your hardware Dell will accept any old reason for jumping onto its data center service wagons and sniffing around your machinery.â¦
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Agency says Odysseus Marketing bundled bogus software with spyware; Spy Deleter charged with posing as antispyware.
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Repent of your public networks, says web guru
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(InfoWorld) - Google's PC search software is vulnerable to a variation on a little-known Web-based attack called anti-DNSÂ pinning that could give an attacker access to any data indexed by Google Desktop, security researchers said this week. This is the second security problem reported this week for the software. On Wednesday, researchers at Watchfire saidÂ they'd found a flaw that could allow attackers to read files or run unauthorized softwareÂ on systems running Google Desktop. As with Watchfire's bug, attackers would first need to exploit a cross-site scripting flaw in the Google.com Web site for this latest attack to work, but the consequences could be serious, according to Robert Hansen, the independent security researcher who first reported the attack. "All of the data on a Google desktop can now be siphoned off to an attacker's machine," he said. Cross-site scripting flaws are common Web server vulnerabilities that can be exploited to run unauthorized code within the victim's browser. Hansen, who is CEO of Sectheory.com, did not post proof of concept code for his attack, but he said that he has "tested every component of it, and it works." He has posted some details of how Google Desktop data could be compromised on his blog. Google said it was investigating Hansen's findings. "In addition, we recently added another layer of security checks to the latest version of Google Desktop to protect users from vulnerabilities related to Web search integration in the future," the company said in a prepared statement. Anti-DNS pinning is an emerging area of security research, understood by just a handful of researchers, said Jeremiah Grossman, CTO at WhiteHat Security. The variation of this attack described by Hansen manipulates the way the browser works with the Internet's DNS in order to trick the browser into sending information to an attacker's computer. "Once you can re-point Google to another IP address, instead of Google getting the traffic, the bad guy does," he said. Because this type of attack is so difficult to pull off and is poorly understood, it is unlikely to be used by the criminals any time soon, Grossman said. But anti-DNS pinning shouldn't be ignored, he added. "We should keep our eyes on it in case the bad guys shift gears." News of the attack comes as Google is trying to enter the desktop productivity market. On Thursday, Google launched a suite of Web-based collaboration software, called the Google Apps Premier Edition, that analysts sayÂ could become a competitor to Microsoft Office. The troubling thing about the attack Hanson identified, which he calls anti-anti-anti-DNS pinning, is that there is very little that can be done to avoid it short of eliminating cross-site scripting vulnerabilities on the Web. "This is really just fundamentally about how browsers work," he said. "If you allow a Web site to have access to your drive -- to modify, to change things, to integrate, or whatever -- you're relying on that Web site to be secure." Hansen and Grossman say that Google is not the only company vulnerable to a growing category of Web-based attacks. For instance, MySpace.com was hit when a fast-moving worm spread through the MySpace community in early December, stealing MySpace log-in credentials and promoting adware Web sites. "A lot of these new attack techniques are going to require the browsers to improve," Grossman said. "The users really have very little ability to protect themselves against these attacks" he said. "It's very bad. Even the experts are afraid to click on each other's links anymore." Â
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The U.S. government has sued a New  Hampshire man in its first attempt to crack down on Internet  "spyware" that seizes control of a user's computer without  permission.
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Security firm warns that all browsers are prey to active hackers.
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OK, we had an extended breather from our last look at BIND's zone file pri.example.org. It's time to finish up and get a sense of what these records mean. To go off-topic a little, recently, I had the task of setting up two OpenLDAP servers and putting together a test environment for a project with several developers and several applications including some LAMP applications. Without a working knowledge of DNS, the project would have gone amuck.
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Unpatched Windows machines are vulnerable to latest adware attack
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A new variant of the MyDoom worm that exploits an unpatched flaw in Microsoftâs Internet Explorer browser has emerged to threaten small business and home users in particular, security experts warned this week.
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On the heels of Microsoft's announcement that it will disable anti-spyware protections on copies of Vista it claims to be counterfeit, the company is under fire for naming the developer of a program that can install adware on user's PCs as one of its Most Valued Professionals.
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The computer maker and a nonprofit organization have launched a project to teach people about spyware and how to avoid it. By Thomas Claburn.
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Most users think their computer is safe from adware and spyware--but they're wrong.
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Visit a Russian porn site using IE 6, risk a spyware installation.