This article is more than 1 year old

Crooks fling banking Trojan at Japanese smut site fans

Wait - they're doing online banking with an unpatched Windows PC?

Cybercrooks are targeting Japanese smut site aficionados with a new banking Trojan run.

The Aibatook malware is targeting customers of Japanese banks who are also visitors on some of the country's most popular pornographic websites.

Security researchers at anti-virus firm ESET estimated that more than 90 smut sites have been contaminated with malicious code.

The malware relies on exploiting a Java security flaw that was patched more than a year ago to push Aibatook onto the machines of Windows PCs. More specifically users visiting compromised sites, are redirected towards an exploit page that attempts to take advantage of Java vulnerability (CVE-2013-2465) patched in June 2013. Attacks involved displaying an 404 error page to mask the fact that the PC is silently running a malicious Java applet.

The whole attack relies on a single Java exploit rather than the standard approach of planting an exploit kit on a compromised websites. Exploit kits attempt to exploit a raft of common browser and other application software vulnerabilities (Adobe Flash, Java etc) to drop malware onto PCs that are not up to date with their patches.

Once the Aibatook malware is installed, it waits for victims to log into online banks with Internet Explorer (the most widely used browser in Japan). The malicious code is designed to inject fraudulent forms onto page that are designed to trick banking customers into handing over confidential banking login information.

Stolen data is then sent to the criminals behind the Aibatook malware campaign via a command-and-control server. The attack - explained in greater depth in a blog post by ESET here - illustrates the importance of keeping up to date with patches.

ESET researchers warn the same crooks behind the Aibatook attack have created newer versions of the malware, capable of stealing credentials from users of web-hosting services and domain resellers. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like