New malware outbreak resembles first disk-based virus attacks

A malware outbreak is using a new twist on an old infection tactic, security experts have warned.

McAfee researcher Vinooo Thomas said in a blog post that the company had seen a rise in the number of malware attacks spreading by way of removable drives.

Many of the attacks take advantage of autorun, a feature in Windows that allows disks and removable media such as USB thumb drives to automatically load content when inserted into a system.

The feature can be disabled, and Microsoft recently released an update for Windows which allows users to set autorun permissions for each drive to prevent devices automatically launching code.

The exploitation of the feature has become a potent way for malware writers to spread infections. Many target thumb drives and other removable media by directing the Trojan to infect the target system, and to reinstall itself on any removable drives along with a specially crafted autorun file.

The infected drive can then either spread the malware to a new host, or reinstall itself on a recently cleaned system.

The tactic brings back memories of some of the earliest computer viruses which, in the days before the internet, spread by infecting floppy disks shared over multiple systems.

"During the past couple of years we have seen malware authors increasingly incorporate the autorun.inf infection vector into malware families, with stunning success," Thomas wrote.

"While the autorun functionality in operating systems does provide some convenience (it saves a couple of clicks), it has single handedly revived the 1980s model of hand-carried malware propagation."

German police have arrested several members of a hacking forum linked to the distribution of Trojan horse software that infected 80,000 computers.

The www.codesoft.cc messageboard was being abused by cybercrooks to exchange tips on ways to use malware and other means to create counterfeit credit cards, according to cybercops from the LKA (Landeskriminalamt) internet crime unit.

Police have raided the home of an unnamed 22-year-old Swiss man from Lucerne, Switzerland, on suspicion of running the forum. He allegedly used the online alias tr1p0d to flog password-stealing software. Police recovered what's claimed to be a database of codesoft.cc's users and their IP addresses from a raid on the Swiss suspect's home, net security firm Sophos adds.

Two further suspects, aged 25 and 28, from the Black Forest and Lower Saxony areas of Germany are under suspicion of using tr1p0d's Trojan software to infect 80,000 computers, before selling stolen login credentials and other goodies to other hackers.

Hackers routinely use underground forums to trade their wares. Despite this, law enforcement actions are infrequent, possibly because in most cases the crooks set themselves up in parts of eastern Europe where law enforcement response can be patchy. However, that is not to say that law enforcement actions on hacking forums are unprecedented, just that they are rare.

Last year police across the world made arrests after it was revealed that DarkMarket carder forum had been run as an FBI sting for months. Around 56 people were arrested worldwide - 11 in the UK - over their involvement in the DarkMarket forum, which posed as an online hang-out for identity thieves, carders, crackers and other nefarious characters.

Source: The Register