Malware Purveyors Exploit The Release Of Microsoft’s August Security Bulletin

Security researchers belonging to BitDefender the security company caution that a fresh campaign is going on, distributing malware by taking advantage of the noise that the recent security bulletin from Microsoft caused.

Familiarly, Microsoft issues fresh security patches on each 2nd Tuesday of every month. Consequently, the industry has named this day 'Patch Tuesday.'

On August 10, 2010, Microsoft in its most recent cycle released a record number of 14 security fixes, with 8 deemed critical, that take care of 34 flaws reported to have inflicted its line of products.

Apparently, cyber-criminals are attempting at taking advantage of people's faith in Microsoft. For, BitDefender's researchers caught a fresh surge of spam mails pretending to be from Microsoft's Security Team. These e-mails display the header, "Microsoft Patch."

Actually, the security team studied a fresh 0-day vulnerability, which makes Windows users vulnerable to code execution or blue-screen crash attacks. As a result, the software giant fixed 34 security flaws within its latest security update. This update, states the spam mail, can be downloaded via clicking the URL given in the message. ZDNet.om reported this on August 13, 2010.

Say the BitDefender researchers, in case anyone who received the spam mail attempts at clicking the win.exe web-link for downloading the update, he will get a fine spam bot, which BitDefender detects as Trojan.SpamBot.CAL.

When planted, the infected computer will give a remote hacker access and manipulative power over itself. In time, it will be converted into a spamming system distributing junk e-mails via Yahoo's Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server.

And suppose the security researchers manage to deactivate the mentioned web-link, there's one back-up link which's already included in the unsolicited message, the BitDefender researchers outlined.

This second link contains a malware identified as 'Trojan.Downloader.Agent.ABFG' that brings forth various crooks over the victimized PC.

In the end, security specialists suggest computer users that if they happen to get these spam mails, it will be more prudent for them to visit Microsoft's official website for downloading the updates. For, people widely know that patches and updates don't usually come via e-mails having implanted web-links.

Related article: Malware Authors Turn More Insidious

» SPAMfighter News - 8/20/2010