A Friend's Blog Got p0wnd

I spent a good part of today investigating a javascript injection that a friend of mine suffered on his personal blog site. It turned out that this is nothing more than a typical adbot/scriptjacking malware infection. The actual injection code is an obfuscated iframe that tries to download a HTTP browser attack tool. The code is inserted in the page build (usually via the wordpress function framework, the style-sheet or even maybe a rogue module) and looks something like this:


The obfuscation resolves to a call that pulls a source script from a website hosted at add-block-filter.info and by then tries to either retrieve stored passwords & cookies or hijack open webpages. More generally targeting e-mail services to send out spam ( your typical adbotnet behaviour).

Tracking back the domain name, it came back to a know malware pusher 7addition.info/8addition.org. So in most likelyhood a new variant of script injection attack whish is picked up & revealed a known trojan downloader javascript iframe infection (at least reported by a few AV vendors e.g: trojan-downloader.js.iframe.ah). In this case, the trojan goes on to contact 2 other malware sites at firstgate.ru & benyodil.cn whom in turn download 3 additional malware infections to continue the pownage:

• a malicious flash file which is in fact a download exploit (e.g: Exploit.SWF.Downloader.ks);


• another html based script which is fact a trojan download agent and also sends out spam asking you to visit a site or click on a video link(e.g: Trojan-Downloader.HTML.Agent.np);


• and finally, a packer javascript html agent which installs a BHO (browser helper object) that turns off the firewall and other windows services (e.g: Packed.JS.Agent.ad).

That's as far as I went with the malicious activity...

Before investigating, my friend and I exchanged a few messages regarding him being p0wnd. He was trying to figure out what had been the root of his infection. Although he blames it on a combination of Twitter/Hotmail and a few other sites, seeing the root of the malicious software that gets pushed I would say that he original got hit from visiting an already infected site or from clicking on some weird website with flash videos (he does love to visit those). Interestingly enough, I think I can track back part of his problem to the 13th of march or a few days before. At that time I received an e-mail from him that was unusual:

I didn't really pay attention to it but maybe should have and warned him at that time of the possible hijacking of his info. He learnt a few things (like not using the same password for his different services). I learnt for myself that when I see a friend sending a weird message to me to get on the ball and warn him/her.
Some more advice I offered is to:

1. Update with regularity his personal blog framework;


2. Recommend also to be careful about using the remember me option on some of these websites as the stored cookies give these clickjack malware a fair bit of leverage.