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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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Here we go again. This isn’t news hot off the press, but I decided I should post about it here just in case some of you have missed it. There has been another Adobe Acrobat Reader exploit, CVE 2009-4324. Since it was first disclosed back in the middle of December, it has grown even nastier. The Internet Storm Center over at sans.org has a good analysis of one of the current variants.

There are still a couple days before Adobe releases a patch, which will finally be released on Jan 12. Adobe suggests you disable Java support until then. This is not the first time this has happened. What I’m suggesting is that even after this is patched, just keep Java disabled. If you open a PDF file that requires Java support, you could always turn it back on. With so many exploits in the wild, and how long it takes for the anti virus vendors to discover them, this one won’t be fixed for almost a month since it was first disclosed publicly, it’s better safe than sorry. Just disable Java support for good. Here’s how to disable Java support in Adobe Acrobat Reader

quoted from Adobe.com

SOLUTION

Customers using Adobe Reader or Acrobat versions 9.2 or 8.1.7 can utilize the JavaScript Blacklist Framework to prevent this vulnerability. Please refer to the TechNote for more information.

Customers who are not able to utilize the JavaScript Blacklist functionality can mitigate the issue by disabling JavaScript in Adobe Reader and Acrobat using the instructions below:
1. Launch Acrobat or Adobe Reader.
2. Select Edit>Preferences
3. Select the JavaScript Category
4. Uncheck the ‘Enable Acrobat JavaScript’ option
5. Click OK

Customers using Microsoft DEP (“Data Execution Prevention”) functionality available in certain versions of Microsoft Windows are at reduced risk in the following configurations:

All versions of Adobe Reader 9 running on Windows Vista SP1 or Windows 7
Acrobat 9.2 running on Windows Vista SP1 or Windows 7
Acrobat and Adobe Reader 9.2 running on Windows XP SP3
Acrobat and Adobe Reader 8.1.7 running on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, or Windows 7
With the DEP mitigation in place, the impact of this exploit has been reduced to a Denial of Service during our testing.

Watch your docs and surf safe

Just got an e-mail that says it’s from e-cards@hallmark.com with the subject: You have received A Hallmark E-Card! It had an attachment called Postcard.zip which was identified by my antivirus, I use NOD32 by E-Set

__________ ESET NOD32 Antivirus warning, version of virus signature database 4693 (20091216) __________

Warning, ESET NOD32 Antivirus found the following threats in the message:

Postcard.zip – probably a variant of Win32/Merond.AA worm – deleted
Postcard.zip > ZIP > document.chm .exe – probably a variant of Win32/Merond.AA worm – was a part of the deleted object

This came from one of my works TV affiliates mailing list. So I am guessing it is one that goes through your address book and sends itself to everyone on there.

Figured this was also a good time to remind people to be careful with any “e-cards” they get. Watch out for infected attachments, as was the case with this one, and watch for links that send you to websites designed to infect you or steal your identity / information.

t’s been about a year since one of the best pen testing tools has seen an upgrade to the framework. Metasploit Framework 3.3 is now available. Not only does it support Linux, Windows, OS X, and many versions of BSD, but now it also supports Windows 7. And according to the website this release has 446 exploits, 216 auxiliary modules, and hundreds of payloads, including an in-memory VNC service and the Meterpreter. However one of the new features that I’m pleased about is you can now run a full console version in Windows using Cygwin which is how I like to run nmap when I’m on my Windows computers, and RXVT. To be honest, I haven’t fired up any of my Linux machines in a while. I just boot from a Linux Live CD most the time but I digress.
The Windows installer works on all versions of Windows from 2000 to Windows 7 and the Linux installer works on most versions of Linux released in the last five years.
I’d like to point out, this is not a toy. This is the bad boy of penetration testing tools. I love using this because I know that if I can’t get into the system I’m testing with it, I can feel pretty confident that system is pretty secure. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m 100% secure because I’ve been doing this long enough to know there is no such thing. But if you can’t successfully attack one of your computers with this, then chances are neither can the script kiddies.

As you may know, I was never able to get Web Tattoo to install into IE7. Something I have done during the removal of it and Fast Browser Search from Firefox somehow causes the install file to crash when I tried to install it in IE7. This is fine for me, but because I never could get MakeTheWebBetter installed in IE7 or IE8, I couldn’t figure out how to uninstall it and tell you how.

Over on a google forum is a link to my first post on removing Fast Browser Search from Firefox. So I subscribed to that thread and today when I checked my e-mail, I found this in it, how to remove Fast Browser Search from IE7 & IE8

Re: [Web Search Help] How do I remove “Fast Browser Search”?

Inbox X

Reply

|
Google Help
to me

show details Oct 14 (9 days ago)

from Google Help
to
date Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:35 AM
subject Re: [Web Search Help] How do I remove “Fast Browser Search”?
mailed-by confucius.bounces.google.com
signed-by google.com

hide details Oct 14 (9 days ago)

Kundan555 has posted an answer to the question “How do I remove “Fast Browser Search”?”:

PLEASE FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS AND RESOLVE THE ISSUE FOR IE8 AND IE7.

=================================================================

Please uninstall fast browser from the program and features in vista and, add and remove program in XP. Then

To fix the new tab issue you need to be comfortable using regedit. Run regedit and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs

under Tabs, clear the fastwebsearch junk and input the following as value data:

res://ieframe.dll/tabswelcome.htm or any entry related with fastbrowser listed over there.

close and restart IE.

I have been unable to verify this, however my knowledge of the registry tells me this could fix it and would be worth trying. Just be CAREFUL any time you run regedit. Messing around in the registry could really bork your system.

Here’s the links to my other Fast Browser Search removal posts

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/08/my-web-tattoo-fast-browser-search-search-gurad-plus-uninstall-removal/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/08/more-my-web-tatto-removal-information/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/07/removing-my-web-tattoo-phone-number/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/06/project-web-tattoo-fast-browser-search-removal-update/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/06/project-web-tattoo-fast-browser-search-remove-part-1/

http://www.pccybertek.com/2009/05/remove-fast-browser-search/

There is a fake adobe flash player updater that monitors your google searches. It looks just like the adobe flash installer. I’m not sure where I picked it up, but luckily I found this fake adobe flash player on a computer running firefox. Good thing I run NOD 32. I have been getting a notice that NOD 32 was blocking an outbound connection

I found out that I was infected by this Fake Adobe Flash Player

While that website does tell you how to figure out if you have it or not, it doesn’t really tell you how to remove it, unless you buy their program. So I’m currently in the process of removing it. If you do have it, you’ll want to stop it right now! I’ve found that by going into Firefox’s extensions (Tools -> Addons -> extensions) you can disable Adobe Player 0.2 and restart Firefox. After doing this, I no longer got the warning for NOD 32 that it’s blocking the connection that msjupdate site, which I don’t know why it hasn’t been shut down yet.
I found socks.exe was running and when I looked for that file, I found it in my Windows/system folder with a creation date of 09-09-09, so I stopped socks.exe and renamed it socks.bak I would have deleted it but just in case it wasn’t installed by this Trojan, I figure it’s better to rename it. If some legit program I have starts complaining that socks.exe is missing, I can always rename it back to socks.exe

Once I’ve figured out how to completely remove it, I will update this post. In the meantime, disabling it will work. It’s after 3AM and I should have been in bed hours ago, but this was too important not to immediately warn you about it and give you at least a way of stopping it until I can post removal instructions.

While writing a new article about removing Fast Browser Search and My Web Tattoo, I was analyzing a new version of MakeTheWebBetter, which is the file I got from the MyWebTattoo site. I noticed it connected to a new site since the last time I looked at it, www.tattoodle.com Looks like they have expanded their operation to include My Space. I also found a new updated uninstall page which included Search Guard Plus, which was another new file I found that was being installed since I wrote my first uninstall guide. I am going to keep writing the new article I am working on but in the mean time, check out the new official uninstall page they have set up. It’s much better than before and like I said it includes the new programs.

Official Tattoodle Uninstall Page

It still doesn’t tell you how to fix the search redirection in Firefox so if that still plagues you, I have a guide for that here

If that still doesn’t fix it for you, and you have some basic computer skills, my next post may be the one to help you.

Unable to attend DefCon this year, I’ve been following it on twitter. There was a talk about how insecure Firefox extensions are.

@ramereth word to the wise: DO NOT trust any firefox extension. assume they can grab and do anything including executing other code #defcon

Just one of many tweets talking about how scary the talk was. So until I can get more information on this, I’m disabling most of my Firefox extensions. Could this be Firefox’s vulnerability equivalent to Internet Explorer’s active-x? Ironically, I’ve been using Google’s Chrome browser lately. I’m liking it more and more. I was just switching back to Firefox because it has a couple extensions I use a lot. But now that they might not be safe, it looks like Chrome is going to be set as my default browser. At least until I find out more about these Firefox extension exploits.

Seeing how this talk was given today, I suspect there will soon be a rash of these exploits and figured I should pass on the info I have even though it’ sketchy at best at this point. To disable your extensions in Firefox, just go to Tools, then addons, then extensions, and uninstall or disable them.

I haven’t stopped working on how to remove My Web Tattoo and the associated programs. If you have it in Firefox, then you’re kinda in luck. I have removed it from Firefox

And I found a phone number that was on the EULA page for Make The Web Better, which is the first program that is downloaded from the My Web Tattoo page. I suggest if you haven’t been able to get it removed from Internet Explorer yet, you follow the advice on their page

If you experience any problems installing and/or
uninstalling the Software Product, please contact us via email at: info@make-the-web-better.com, or call us at: 1 (800) 831-8940.

I’m still working on removing it. I can’t get it installed on IE 7 on my test computer. So I’ve been doing some other stuff like running it in a sandbox to see what it does. I’ve identified several registry keys that are affected and where it’s sending data to. I just got this info though and I’m in the middle of a computer repair job that should have been done already. So when I get some more time I’ll write up what I have found about removing it and more.

In the meant time, there is the number you can all. You can leave comments on how it went if you do call them. I’m sure others will be interested in how they helped you.

Looks like there is another ActiveX vulnerability. If you are unfamiliar with ActiveX, basically, a web page can do stuff like read and write files when you use Internet Explorer and allow ActiveX options. This nice for the Microsoft Update site to see which files it needs to update, but that’s about it in my opinion. Sure, there is a pop-up that asks you if you want to allow a website to use ActiveX but history shows that too many people allow ActiveX when the shouldn’t. There is an unbelievable amount of attacks that use ActiveX. That’s one of the main reasons I use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, it doesn’t have ActiveX so you don’t have to worry. Google’s Chrome is another web browsers that doesn’t have ActiveX.

Our friends over at the Internet Storm Center are keeping an active eye on this new vulnerability. You can read all about it and follow their updates here. So do your Microsoft Updates, several just came out, and if you really want to be safe, stop using Internet Explorer or use it as little as possible and switch to Firefox, Chrome or even Opera. Stay Safe.