Servers also used for DoS attack on security journalist’s site.
More than a thousand websites pushing spamvertised pharmaceuticals have been found to be using name servers on hacked machines in
Microsoft
‘s IP space.
Spammers and malware writers have a habit of hiding as well as they can and operating using hacked computers is a common way of doing so. However, when security researchers looked into the name servers associated with 1,025 domains that were selling various kinds of pharmaceuticals, they were surprised to see that these servers ran on IP addresses owned by
Microsoft
.
The unusual location of the apparently compromised machines led to some speculations, including one that the machines may have been part of a honey pot, but a spokesman for the computer giant blamed it on human error. Two lab machines were misconfigured, which led to them being compromised. The spokesman said that no customer data has been compromised and no production systems have been been affected, and that the compromised machines have been removed from the network.
While being controlled by the crooks, the machines also played an important role in a failed denial-of-service attack on the website of security journalist Brian Krebs. Shortly before the attack took place, Krebs had
written
about websites selling stolen credit cards. It is not hard to guess that the gang behind these sites weren’t pleased with Krebs’ revelations.
More can be found on
The Register
here
and
here
and on Brian Krebs’ blog
here
.
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Posted on 14 October 2010 by
Virus Bulletin
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