PC CyberTekThe cyberspace visitor’s information center

Last night I saw a banner ad for a “new” version of Risk. I use to play Risk, the board game, many years ago and thought this looks like fun. So I downloaded and installed it. With in a couple of minutes, ESET NOD32 was blocking downloads from a site I wasn’t at. Next time I went to use google to search for something, my search results were being redirected. Looks like it installed some malware on my computer. Most likely it’s some sort of XSS cross scripting exploit.
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I’m sure you have all seen this before. Your surfing along, when all of a sudden, you get a pop-up that alerts you that your computer is infected! YIKES! What to do!??! Ah, you can just download a “free” program that will fix it for you. I’d hope you already know, this is a scam. It’s one of two things. You can either download a legit program that will scan your computer, tell you how badly infected it is and you can purchase a full version of the program to remove all your “infections.” Just in case your not really infected, these programs will increase your infection count by adding your cookies to the list. Pretty good way to jack up the numbers, but I wouldn’t call cookies an infection. And I sure don’t have to buy any program to remove them. The other thing that could happen, and probably will is, you will download a program that will then install it’s own addware. Turns out they have a name for this stuff now, and that name is Scareware.

Turns out many people are still falling for this scam. I had to clean my parents computer up, from one of these. Try doing it over VNC, and you may have your patience tested like I did. Anyways, the old folks aren’t the only ones falling for this, and now their is a new variation. Spware Protect 2009, is the new breed of scareware. Not only does it con you by getting you to install it, it actually does damage to get you to “purchase” it for $49.99 and install a trojan downloader. Meanwhile it increases the pop ups telling you how infected your computer is. So you order the program with your credit card and guess what, you just gave them your credit card number, no hacking needed. A local electronics store, with the initials RS, got hit by it and from what I could get out of them, sounds like the whole corp has been infected through their network.

Since I first found out about this last week, I’ve found out that it’s now also being installed by the conficker virus. At first I was thinking, wouldn’t people be suspicious if there was a new piece of software, on their computer? I sure as hell would. Then I started thinking about it, in a corporate situation. Some poor schmuck, in accounting or where ever, could think it was installed by their IT Dept. So the keylogger installed would run until the computer crashed. The one good thing is, the domain that was selling Spyware Protect 2009 is gone. Keep an eye out for variations with new names and the same or slightly modified interface.

-Your friendly neighborhood PC Cybertek

With all the media hype about conficker, I thought you might like a good collection of trustworthy resources. Beware of websites that have recently registered as “conficker help.” In fact, just avoid them all together. There’s also reports of malicious software masquerading as detection and cleaning tools for Conficker-infected computers, as well as spam offering the same.

There’s no need to try and figure out what’s safe or real and what has more sinister plans in mind. The good folks at dshield.org have been keeping an updated list of third party information on conficker. Here you can find plenty of free conficker detection and removal tools, general information and the microsoft patch. That should help keep you updated, safe and informed.

I’ve also found out about one other real neat way of detecting it, but it’s for more advanced users, so I’m going to make a seperate post about it.

I’m going to post some helpful info about conficker in a bit. I’m at work right now and can’t. Will do it at lunch… Some real good and timely resources. Be sure to check back

An interesting post today, on the Internet Storm Center, reminds us to look over our router logs. Also, disable remote administration of the router, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

You can see what happens when someone guesses an easy password and gets into a router, and the lsessons learned, here.

New details have been released about the New Zealand teen who is one of the most recent, and youngest, snared by the FBI in an operation dubbed Bot Roast II. Multiple arrests and convictions have come from this FBI sting.

Owen Walker, an 18 year old from Whitianga, New Zealand, is suspected of creating malicious software that took control of over a million computers. The FBI also believes AKILL, Walker’s online handle or nick name, is “the ringleader of an elite international botnet coding group” and has caused “more than $25 million in economic loss”. If evidence is found that warrants charges, Walker could be charged either in New Zealand or extradited and charged in the United States.

So far eight others, here in the U.S., have been charged in relation to the FBI’s investigation of Walker’s software. Three of them have been sentenced with jail terms of 12 to 47 months.

Botnets are comprised of computers which have been infected with malicious software. These computers are also known as “zombies” and can be used to for various illegal activities. Some “zombies” are used for phishing scams, identify theft, spam, network attacks, and scanning for vulnerable computers and websites which they can then install the botnet software on. People who contol these botnets are known as bot herders. Some bot herders have control of millions of computers. Currently it is estimated that there are approximately 150 million botnet infected computers.