‘Discreet’ little malware ‘iframe’
p2pnet news | Security:- UK-based writer and broadcaster Bill Thompson says he thinks his blog was hacked sometime last week, “and a discreet little <iframe> linking to a malware hosting site was added to the 30boxes widget you can see on the right”.
He goes on:
It wasn’t 30boxes fault – the widget code hadn’t changed, so I assume that something managed to inject the relevant line of code into my database by exploiting a flaw in Wordpress.
I’ve just upgraded to Wordpress 2.3 and have checked what I can, but am still investigating as I’d like to know what the hole was so I can be sure it is patched. And I apologise to anyone who got a nasty alert message when they visited when using IE.
Special thanks go to John Warlow, who was trying to figure out how to fix the RSS feed coming from the del.icio.us entries (something that bugs me too!) and took the time to email me about the site’s attempt to download VBS.Phelp onto his PC. And no thanks to Google/Stopbadware who flagged the site as infected but didn’t bother to tell me they had done so, or offer any indication as to what the problem actually might have been.
Interesting.
“I noticed that a small 6px x 5px gif appeared for a while on p2pnet right at the bottom of the page, and I think it could be a minor privacy hazard,” Andy emailed me a little while ago.
I’d meant to check it out. But I forgot.
Andy goes on:
Here’s why: its properties include the referrer tag … with the previous page tacked on the end. So a user visits a private site … and follows a link to a p2pnet story. Then the user saves the page, and emails it to a friend (or his boss). The recipient can then see, in the image properties, where the user had previously been browsing.
I’m pretty sure the .gif on this site was to allow WordPress to gather statistics. But you never know, especially if you run the kind of blog which has potential interest for certain undesirables ………
Jon
Also See:
Bill Thompson – Malware and my blog, October 23, 2007
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