Tracking down malware
Criminals increasingly attempt to camouflage the traces of their malware on the internet to keep control of a hijacked server for as long as possible. However, their paths can be retraced using special tools to identify the vulnerability the malware intends to exploit to enter a system.
While, in the past, browsers only contracted viruses and trojans via dubious web pages, all that is required today is that users read the morning news on a popular news site. In the most recent incident, browser holes were exploited to install scareware in the advertising banners at German news sites Handelsblatt.de and zeit.de. For this attack, the criminals responsible concealed specially crafted JavaScript code in the banner. This loaded further code in an iFrame that, in turn, pointed to a different page where the Neosploit exploit toolkit finally checked the browser's QuickTime, Java and Adobe Reader plug-ins for various holes.
