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Malware tricksters launch Flash attacks

Clipboard hijacking
Wednesday, 20 August 2008, 03:57

SOME BIG WEBSITES – including Digg, MSNBC and Newsweek – are being salted with malware-infected Adobe Flash banner ads that take over users' system-wide clipboards.

Any web browser on Windows, Mac and Linux systems that runs Flash, which is almost all of them including Microsoft's Internet Exploder, Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox, is said to be vulnerable.

The malicious adverts place a persistent URL on the wibbler's clipboard, which points to a fake anti-virus program that presumably contains malware like a Trojan, keyboard logger, zombie robot or rootkit. The user has to close and restart the web browser or even reboot the system in order to purge the offending URL and make their clipboard usable again.

It's apparently not known yet how the offending banner ads are being inserted or served. µ

L'Inq
Zdnet bog

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Comments
Here we go!

Flash is the new IE. Adobe has made it do so much that now and gotten it in a market position that it _IS_ the new vector for malware. Everyone has it, regardless of OS, Browser, or device. Time for everyone to uninstall...

posted by : Dan, 20 August 2008 Complain about this comment
Just tried it in Linux...

I have tried the "proof of concept" linked from the referenced website. While in Windows I had to close all my FireFox instances to finally get rid of the URL, I could just overwrite it on my Linux machine - might be it only worked because I have to use the wrapper for flash because I am using 64bit Linux and Adobe so far did not release a 64bit version of his flashplayer...

posted by : Christopher Lee Thomas, 20 August 2008 Complain about this comment
As Predicted

See security related comments at

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/30/sony-ericsson-merges-flash-java
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/02/adobe-releases-acrobat
etc.

The problem is not just the malware in form of Adobe Macromedia Flash encapsulated ads, the problem is Adobe's inability to address security issues with its software. That is one reason why I will never install Adobe software.

If people would read up on how their privacy is being violated by Adobe Macromedia Flash, perhaps they would have another reason to uninstall the Adobe Macromedia Flash software.

DRM in Adobe Macromedia Flash would be another reason to ditch Flash for good. The sooner the better.

posted by : Flush Flash, 20 August 2008 Complain about this comment
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