Trend Micro hit by massive Web hack
Security vendor Trend
Micro has fallen victim to a widespread Web attack that splashed malicious
software onto hundreds of legitimate Web sites in recent days.
A Trend Micro spokesman confirmed that the company's site had been hacked Thursday,
saying that the attack took place earlier in the week. "A portion of our
site -- some pages were attacked," said Mike Sweeny, a Trend Micro spokesman.
"We took the pages down overnight Tuesday night -- and took corrective
action."
On Thursday security vendor McAfee
reported that more than 20,000 Web pages have been affected by the attack. The
pages are infected with malicious code that tries to install password-stealing
software on the PCs of people who visit the sites.
Researchers are still not sure how the attackers are managing to hack these
Web pages, but the pages all seem to use Microsoft's Active Server Page (ASP)
technology, which is used by many Web development programs to create dynamic
HTML pages. A software bug in any of those programs is all the attackers need
to install their malicious code.
The infected Web pages are not obviously malicious, but the attackers have
added a small bit of JavaScript code that redirects visitors' browsers to an
invisible attack launched from servers based in China. This same technique was
used a year ago, when attackers infected the Web sites of the Miami Dolphins
and Dolphins Stadium just prior to the 2007 Super Bowl XLI football game.
The JavaScript attack code hosted on these infected Web sites takes advantage
of bugs that have already been patched, so users whose software is up-to-date
are not at risk. However, McAfee warns that some of the exploits are for obscure
programs such as ActiveX controls for online games, which users may not think
to patch.
If the code is successful, it then installs a password-stealing program on
the victim's computer that looks for passwords for a number of online games,
including the "Lord of the Rings Online."
It's embarrassing when security vendors fall victim to the attacks they are
supposed to prevent, but Trend Micro is not the only company to have had its
Web site hacked in recent months. In January, parts of CA's Web site were infected
with a very similar type of attack.
IDG News Service
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