The Wild Wild World Wide Web - Twenty-Four Seven Security

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March 19, 2008
The Wild Wild World Wide Web

Just wanted to make sure my readers were aware that the internet content security company, Trend Micro, fell victim to a massive Web attack last week. According to CSO online, the attack happened last Thursday and more than 20,000 pages were effected by the attack, infecting them with malicious code that tried to install password-stealing software on visitors' computers.

I see this attack like cops see those people who attack cops -- you hit back with overwhelming force, because anyone who would attack a cop wouldn't hesitate to attack a regular old civilian. So how did these hackers get at Trend Micro, and what does that mean for us civilian websites?

Quick note: this is all the more reason to bone-up on what attacks we can expect in the future by attending ebizQ's Threatscape 2008. Sign up right here.

Experts aren't certain how the attackers did it, but all the infected web pages did use Microsoft's Active Server Page (ASP) technology, which is used to create dynamic HTML pages. Also, the effected pages were not directly infected, but the hackers added a bit of JavaScript the redirected visitors' browsers to an invisible attacks launched from servers in China. This same trick was used last year on the Miami dolphins website previous to last year's Super Bowl.

One good thing is users whose software is up-to-date were not at risk, but McAfee warns that some of the exploits are for ActiveX that controls for online gaming, not altogether ubiquitous, but rare enough that someone may not think to patch it.

Trend Micro is not the only company to end up hacker chum, as this past January CA's Web site was infected with a similar type of attack. And what does that mean for us: Be wary, but what can you do but business as usual.not the only company to have had its Web site hacked in recent months. In January, parts of CA’s Web site were infected with a very similar type of attack.