China-Tibet row spills over into malware attacks

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Apr 16, 2008

Both sides of debate targeted to spread malicious code.

With the political row over China's involvement in Tibet continuing to make the headlines, cybercriminals have been as quick as ever to exploit the public interest in the topic, using the story as a hook for several malware attacks.

The first was as wave of SQL-based attacks probing websites related to the Free Tibet movement for vulnerabilities, and where possible injecting malicious code which caused visitors to be exposed to drive-by downloads of remote-control software. A few days later, a political cartoon apparently supporting the Free Tibet position was seen disguising an install vector for a keylogger stealthed with a rootkit.

Details on the two attacks are blogged at McAfee here and here.

Posted on 16 April 2008 by Virus Bulletin

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

In memoriam: Prof. Ross Anderson

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of Professor Ross Anderson a few days ago.

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

VB2021 localhost videos available on YouTube

VB has made all VB2021 localhost presentations available on the VB YouTube channel, so you can now watch - and share - any part of the conference freely and without registration.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.