Over the past week we came across several client submissions of ‘Personal Security Pro’, one of those highly ambitious FakeAV families that are currently prevalent.

This FakeAV, upon installation and execution, terminates almost every executable running in your system, which includes even security products. The FakeAV copies itself to a randomly named folder as “%AppData%\<randomnamefolder>\<randomnamefile>.exe” and drops a RunOnce registry trace that has a value that is equally random as the filename and folder name.

This FakeAV has an unusual behavior insofar as it drops a RunOnce entry rather than the standard Run flavour. A registry RunOnce entry is a method provided by Windows to initiate any executable for one time only upon system reboot, the RunOnce entry being deleted thereafter. Hence the life of this registry entry is just one reboot. Thus when you boot back the system and search for any malicious traces in the registry you wouldn’t find any, however the FakeAV would have got initiated. This FakeAV, on getting executed, terminates most processes that are not core system processes. One of the executables it allows us to run is ‘Explorer.exe’. After terminating the processes it drops the RunOnce registry entry again. The cycle is repeated on the next reboot.

The functionality to terminate running processes and prevent new ones from starting up is done in an attempt to circumvent the clutches of security software. In fact, the RunOnce key is added in a strategically temporal manner to avoid it being flagged by HIPS (Host Intrusion Prevention System) rules, ubiquitous in Anti-Virus products these days. HIPS is a method of blocking dynamic malware activity. In the case of the K7 TS11 product, with its robust self-protection, the FakeAV’s attempts at termination are futile, and the malware file gets flagged and quarantined without a problem.

Kaarthik R.M
K7TCL

The malware economy is always evolving and always looking out for better ways to make maximum utilization of minimal resources. Storing malicious files for retrieval at a later period, for example, was done on already infected web servers. But that meant that the malware authors were at the mercy of the system administrator monitoring that server. The moment the infected files were identified, the server hosting the malicious files would go down and the malware life cycle would thus come to an end.

The successful businessmen that they are during these harsh economic times, the malware authors then decided to include file hosting services in their arsenal. A file hosting service, as you might know, provides online storage of files. Radpishare, Megaupload, Filesonic etc. are all examples of such a service. This shift enabled the malware authors to pass on the bandwidth and disk storage cost to these sites. In addition, the reputation associated with these sites not only meant that the chances of the malicious files now being identified & reported became low, but also that the naive users were more likely to execute these malicious files, thereby increasing the malware’s time to live.

The file hosting services then brought in some checks, whereby, premium users of these sites could download files instantly at unrestricted download speeds, but regular users experienced delayed starts of downloads and restricted downloads speeds. Although unintentional, this served as a security feature in that the users were forced to look at the website before he/she could download the file. Given below is a screenshot of the countdown timer that is displayed to a regular user while downloading a file for free:

However, the opportunistic malware authors have managed to circumvent this check. This allows them to fetch the malicious files onto their victim’s machine without any user interaction whatsoever. Given below is an example of such malicious URLs which when clicked will download the file without displaying the initial countdown screen:

• http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12138956/java[Removed].exe
• https://rs533l33.rapidshare.com/files/3874050200/facebook_[Removed]jpeg.exe
• http://uppit.com/p19geeksdu4c/Premium[Removed].exe
• http://filesonic.com/file/65464647/Profesor[Removed].exe

While most of these hosting services have a system in place where unlawful contents can be reported, design flaws such as these might go unnoticed. At K7TCL, we strongly urge these file hosting services to identify and fix such design flaws in their site as soon as possible. We also suggest that they run an anti-virus solution to detect such malicious files, since their apparent laxness in this regard is helping the bad guys deliver their malware.

‘It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the Laws of Gravity’ – Kofi Annan (former UN Secretary General).

It appears malware writers have begun to take globalization to heart. You might recall an earlier blog post which highlighted the fact that malware authors were failing to tailor their malware to the OS locale. They seem to be learning and correcting their errors.

Here at K7TCL we came across a malware sample that upon execution seems like yet another example of ransom-ware (Winlocker to be specific). The malware displays a fake system crash message as shown below:

It is unlikely to matter to a layman but FYI the memory address 0x3BC3 is in the range generally reserved for MS-DOS features rather than modern system process code so, from a technical viewpoint, the message is clearly bogus.

In the above case access to the computer is denied until the victim enters a ‘deactivation key’, which needs to be requested from the attacker, by dialing telephone numbers that seem to originate from the African continent.

Interestingly, examining the strings inside the malware reveals that the above fake message is available in several languages. Playing around with the ‘Regional and Language Options’ in control panel and then executing the malware resulted in the following:

French:

German:

Indonesian:

From the above screen shots it is clear that malware authors are investing significant resources in creating the world’s local malware. By covering a few more languages, the malware authors have now managed to expand their potential targets across multiple continents, thereby probably increasing their revenue by several folds.

One can only speculate about the stage at which the victim loses his/her money, whether on entering the ‘deactivation key’ the malware would actually release the system, and whether the malware would return at a later stage to trouble the user some more.

This threat is detected as Password-Stealer (0028ee481) by K7 Total Security.

Kaarthik R.M
K7TCL

Social engineering is the art of manipulating people’s behaviour. Some malware authors rely on social engineering to disguise their code and get it executed on a user’s machine. A key element of a successful malware campaign, which relies on social engineering to lure its victims, is the visual appeal of the attack. Under the right circumstances, a malware which is strikingly similar to a file it is trying to impersonate, is more likely to get executed by a naive user.

Fake Anti-Virus malware authors, for example, are known to put in considerable effort to make their scare ware messages look more authentic. We had blogged about one such sample, which even goes to the lengths of copying malware descriptions from security vendors’ websites, in order to get the user into executing it.

Recently, we came across a website which takes this visual aspect of social engineering quite seriously. The site under discussion, www.vista.[Removed] claims to provide a number of [already freely available] applications for download. Here’s a brief list of the files that were distributed from this site over the last week:

• Divx.exe
• MySQL.exe
• VideoLAN.exe
• WinPcap.exe

To boost the chances of having the files downloaded and executed, each software listed in the site has a brief description of itself, screen shots, user reviews, comments etc. It appears that the author of the site has spared no expense, at least in terms of effort, in plagiarizing the content from other genuine software distribution sites, making the site appear as legitimate as possible, to lure people into downloading and executing the files.

Not all that glitters is gold though. Closer inspection reveals that all files downloaded from this site are around 2.5 MB in size and on execution, the files prompt the user to send an SMS to a premium rate number, from which a reply is sent back with a code to unlock and install the applications. While the files don’t do any damage to the user’s computer, the innocent user still ends up getting charged for the premium rate SMS that was probably sent. One can only assume that this site could be a landing page for a broader attack scheme.

Social engineering (not to be confused with social networking!) based on PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard) is a very potent weapon for effecting malware execution on various operating systems, including those on mobile devices such as Android. It thrives on temptation, ignorance, and fear on the part of the victim. Even though descriptions of social engineering are ubiquitous and some may consider the topic to be mundane, we at K7TCL feel it our duty to keep the general public at large informed about the use and abuse of social engineering so that users are less likely to be seduced by malware authors. Do not invite the thief through your front door.

Image Courtesy of www.publicdomainpictures.net

Lokesh Kumar
K7TCL

A digital signature applied to an object is meant to verify that the object comes from a known source, and also that the file has not been tampered with subsequently. In addition, the source of the software would have been registered with a well-known certificate authority which confers on the source an aura of legitimacy, and thus a vicarious trust on the signed object.

The mere presence of a digital signature, however, does not intend that the file in question is clean. Malware authors can and do exploit the misconception of trust associated with digital signatures to defraud the user into running their wares. The Zeus family of malware, for example, used self-signed certificates masquerading as a certificate from a legitimate company. The Stuxnet malware generated digital signatures using stolen private keys.

When legitimately signed software exhibit questionable behaviour, it leads to complications. Such applications come from software distributors who digitally sign their code and make it appear clean by bundling them with other legitimate applications. A colleague from the Anti-Virus community had recently blogged about one such software distributor – Pinball Corp., whose software displays dubious behaviour. The software comes bundled with installers for legitimate media related software like:

• XVid Codec
• FLV Codec
• VLC Player etc.

At K7TCL, we’ve been noticing that these digitally signed installers come with a new checksum almost everyday over the last couple of months, and that this trend is still continuing. One wonders why a company claiming to distribute legitimate applications would employ:

• Server-side polymorphism – A technique used by malware authors to avoid being detected by security vendors
• Missing codec scam – A social engineering technique used by malware authors to lure victims into running files

The ethical use of digital signatures states that a digital certificate can be revoked if mis-representation of software behaviour is suspected. But what constitutes this mis-representation? It seems that either the certificate issuing authority is unaware of this abuse, or perhaps it is aware, but is unwilling to act upon it. Either way, the security vendors may be left with no choice but to take matters into their own hands. These files, despite having a legitimate digital signature, are detected as Adware/Spyware by most Anti-Virus vendors.

Lokesh Kumar
K7 TCL

Recently we received an email from the RBI (Reserve Bank of India), or so it claims to be, regarding a ‘One Time Password’ registration.  This ended up in the spam folder. Let us see why.

Here is the email in question:

• The source of this email (highlighted green) is ‘rbi.org.in’ which is not suspicious but is probably spoofed.
• It informs us to ignore any warning (highlighted red) that the email client might give us. This is suspicious.
• The attachment (highlighted cyan) has a double extension. This is clearly suspicious.

There is even a tail-piece of advice to ‘Beware of Phishing’ to make the user feel good about the message. After all, no thief warns you about impending thievery, right? Wrong!

Once you download and open the attachment you are directed to the following page:

This looks like a normal RBI page. But a closer look at the address reveals for a fact that this not an RBI page. It is a login page but it is not secure, and there is no ‘https’ authentication. This is a cleverly constructed page. Only the ‘Login ID’ and the ‘Password’ fields are custom made. The rest is ‘borrowed’ from the actual RBI site, therefore clicking on any of the menu items would still take you to the valid RBI page.

Let us check what is inside the attachment:

This URL has quite a number of sub-domains (grayed out for security reasons), none of which is even remotely related to the RBI. This is highly suspicious. Double-clicking on the attachment would take you to the page shown above which masquerades as a  bona fide RBI site.

Let us start filling in the form with some fake details:

Once you fill in the details and click next you will be taken to the following page wherein you’ll be asked to fill in your transaction password and mobile number:

Once you click submit it throws a message that the registration is successful. But there was no actual password registration done during the entire exercise. The mail states an additional password is to be created, which was never done here. Whenever a new password is created any valid system would ask you to confirm your password, which was not the case here. Hence this is a clear attempt to phish out confidential details.

The network captures of the above exercises show the password and user names being sent over the Internet as plain text messages:

Never would your bank send your banking credentials as plain text. They are always sent over a secure connection in an encrypted format.

At the time of writing the attack domain was still live. To avoid being a victim of such social engineering attacks, the solution to a large extent still rests with the user, even though URL filtering and phishing heuristics do thwart many of these attempts at phishing. Please read through one of the earlier entries to find out how to recognize and stay away from phishing scams – ‘Teach a Man to Anti-Phish’

Kaarthik R.M
K7 TCL

Malware authors have long realized that implementing scare tactics to rip people off their money works. Why waste time finding a new vulnerability to spread malware when you can scare people into downloading and running it? For a while now, fake anti-virus malware has been one of the top revenue generators for the malware authors.

Lately however, users have turned vigilant towards such fraudulent security tools and simply ignore the spurious warnings. The malware authors, who have realized this, have upped their game by changing the scareware reports to involve hard drive failures rather than virus infections.

Over the last month, K7TCL noticed a steady rise in the number of samples arriving with the name “pusk.exe” from various sources. Closer analysis of one sample revealed that this was a fake disk diagnostic tool. On installation the malware displays the following message:

The malware then goes on to display fake disk diagnosis messages:

It’s no surprise that when the users click on the “Fix Errors” dialogue box, they see the message below:

These samples are detected generically as “Trojan (0026b5241)”.

Lokesh Kumar
K7TCL

Miscreants are always geared up to start a new wave of spam and malware campaign. When a sensational event occurs, users tend to go searching for news on the event, making it easy for the criminals  to do what they do best.

Case in point, last week saw the Internet abuzz with news regarding Osama Bin Laden’s death.  Some research into the user’s search behavior from Google trends revealed that the maximum number of searches were for the keyword “Osama” and the maximum number of searches arrived from the United States.

The second to top the list was India, with Tamil Nadu leading the way, closely followed by Karnataka.

The bad guys tried to capitalize on this news by poisoning search results, spreading malware & spam. They setup fake videos, facebook wall posts, websites, all claiming to reveal “exclusive” information on the death of Al-Qaeda’s top man, thus enabling them to invite potential victims to their trap.

Out of approximately 1,00,000 videos uploaded to date on You-tube with the keyword “Osama”, around 23,000 were uploaded just in the past week.

Also, there were around 1,300 websites registered, in the first 3 days since the news emerged, relating to Osama’s death.

Out of these newly registered websites, the maximum number of registrations was made with the registrar “1 & 1 Internet AG”, followed by namecheap.com.

Queries in domain reputations sites like www.malwareurl.com indicate that both registrars had hosted sites that have spread exploits & spam before.

Lokesh Kumar
K7 TCL

There is nothing surprising about compromised web servers dishing out an iframe which redirects users to a potentially malicious site. K7TCL recently came across one such site which belongs to the Indian government and is currently injected with a malicious iframe.

Analyzing the contents of the iframe reveal that the iframe redirects users to urinoor.com

A quick whois on this site shows that it is registered to a user called “saamfoster”, who is infamous for registering other sites which implement “drive-by” exploits and use social engineering techniques to get users to install malware, disguised as a video codec or an anti-virus package.

Although the infiltration vector on the government site is unknown, what is known is that the website referenced by the iframe has been down for a while now. This, however, doesn’t mean that the threat has been neutralized. Many a time, we have seen old domains spring back to life and start spreading malware all over again. The site administrator not only needs to ensure that the malicious iframe is completely cleaned up, but also that the infiltration vector is investigated thoroughly, and fixed appropriately.

K7TCL attempted to contact the site administrator but our efforts were in vain.

Lokesh Kumar
K7TCL

Proactive protection is extremely important in the current threat landscape where malware change faster than the time taken for light to travel from the Sun to Earth.

Along with robust static and dynamic proactive Anti-Virus protection, K7TCL is contemplating providing a unique, bespoke service to the individual based on complex astrological calculations which have evolved since Vedic times in India.

We are hoping to help answer questions such as “How likely am I to get infected now or in the future, and with what?”. The mathematical formulae involve asterisks, i.e. “stars”, geometric positions, and “signed” comparison operations on individual horoscope data.

K7TCL advice may include corrective steps to be taken to counter any warnings of impending doom. Even under these circumstances one ought not to panic as there is always room for one’s destiny to be what one makes of it.

In addition, given the nature of fatalistic heuristics, 100% accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Nevertheless, today, the 1st of April 2011, is a “good” day to let people know about some of the plans we are considering.

Credits:
Images courtesy of vedic-academy.com and paceywilliams.com

Samir Mody
Senior Manager K7TCL