Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 27 Jan 2010 10:59 am |
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Right now a lot of Apple affectionados are searching Google for information about the latest Apple product to be released: The iPad. The official announcement came on January 27, from Steve Jobs. But, information had already leaked and was published on the Internet a few days ago. Some of the websites talking or speculating about the iPad are harmless, but others are not.
Cyber criminals in Eastern Europe watch the news every day and play on stories like this, that generate huge amounts of public interest, leading to Google (and other) searches for details. In anticipation of today's announcement, these fine Russian gentlemen (not) have gone about poisoning search engines, and facebook pages, with fake entries and articles about the new tablet computer from Apple. Those articles have links purporting to lead to sources of information about the iPad.
Yesterday, the third result for "facebook unnamed app" - on Google - was leading to hostile websites that load rogue anti virus scanners in your browser and attempt to trick people out of their money with fake security alerts. Cyber criminals are continuously using poisoned search results on current events to extort money for fake security products that are written in Russia and the Ukraine.
If you are looking for information about Apple products, go to apple.com. To really be safe, do so with an Apple computer. You are less likely to be infected by hostile redirection scripts injected into invisible iframes on compromised websites and blogs.
What if you already fell for this scam?
Go get Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (MBAM), install it, update it and scan your computer for malware. Full instructions are found on the aforementioned MBAM page. It is designed and updated specifically to detect and remove constantly morphing rogue security programs, although it detects many other types of malware.
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"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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Wiz Feinberg
From:
Mid-Michigan, USA
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Posted 27 Jan 2010 11:22 am
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If you use Internet Explorer to surf the web, you are in serious danger of exploitation via multiple avenues of automated attacks. While all browsers are capable of being exploited and all users can be tricked into manually downloading a Trojan Horse malware program, MSIE users are the most highly targeted group of all time. You folks need additional protection against hostile websites and iframe/JavaScript redirection exploits.
Firefox users can install the NoScript! add-on to disable JavaScript and iframe xss attacks for untrusted websites, but IE users can't use that add-on. But, there is another add-on protection for IE that you can try out.
Trend Micro, the makers of Trend Micro Internet Security (PC-cillin), are offering free add-on protection for Internet Explorer browsers. It is presently called "Browser Guard" and is available in a zipfile, here. The release notes are found here. It appears that Browser Guard is being updated on a regular basis, and is being ramped up to offer some additional protection against drive-by Trojan downloads and known hostile websites.
More information about Browser Guard and the recent "Aurora" attacks against Google, Adobe, Cisco and Microsoft are in this Trend Micro Malware Blog article
People who subscribe to Trend Micro Internet Security are already protected against these types of exploits, and zero-day vulnerability attacks, by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network.
_________________
"Wiz" Feinberg, Moderator SGF Computers Forum
Security Consultant
Twitter: @Wizcrafts
Main web pages: Wiztunes Steel Guitar website | Wiz's Security Blog | My Webmaster Services | Wiz's Security Blog |
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