SafeUM
Home Blog Services Download Help About Recharge

Axarhöfði 14, 110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015
SafeUM
Blog
Services
Download
Help
About
Recharge
Menu
Archive
TOP Security!
25 Jan 2016

Hackers use dating sites to build a botnet of vulnerable home routers

At least five dating websites may be involved in an attack scenario that is spreading a worm to site visitors, infecting their home router and adding it to a botnet.

The worm is a variant of TheMoon, which was first discovered in February 2014, and works by taking advantages of weaknesses in the HNAP (Home Network Administration Protocol) protocol.

Attackers are using one-night stand dating sites to spread the worm. On each malicious website, the infection occurs via a two-step phase launched via a malicious iframe embedded on the page. The iframe works by making different URL calls to see if the router runs the HNAP protocol and if it uses the 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.1.1 for router management and as gateway IPs.

It then calls home, informing its creators of its findings. Here is where the second attack stage happens, and where a second URL is loaded in the iframe, which delivers the actual worm, a Linux ELF binary. This worm prevents users from using some of the router's inbound ports, and it also opens outbound ports through which it spreads to other routers.

Criminals are building a botnet for later use

Neither in 2014 nor in late 2015, when Damballa researchers came across this threat, did the worm have a C&C infrastructure behind it. This means the botnet is currently only in its incipient or testing stages, spreading to affected devices, in an attempt to build a larger infrastructure, which may be useful later down the road. This theory is also validated by the fact that, towards the end of the year, the worm's second-stage iframe URL was disabled, and the ELF binary removed from the download servers.

"There are different scenarios on how the criminals could bring their victims to visit an affected website via malvertising, exploit kits or phishing email. The criminals moved from scanning IP ranges for potential vulnerable home routers to embedding the attack on a website," Damballa's Loucif Kharouni explains. "It feels like this conversion to a web-based attack is new and under construction."

Damballa reports that the new TheMoon worm sample is not currently detected by any antivirus maker. The security vendor also tracked down the owner of the malicious dating site used to spread the worm and found out that he's also the man behind four other dating sites of the same nature.

The company does not believe him to be the actual criminal behind this new botnet and thinks his identity was stolen and used illegally to register the domains. In 2014, security researchers discovered that most of the vulnerable devices were various models of Linksys (Belkin) and Dlink home routers.

Tags:
information leaks
Source:
Softpedia
2007
Other NEWS
3 Jul 2020 safeum news imgage An encrypted messaging service has been infiltrated by police
4 May 2020 safeum news imgage Two-Factor Authentication ​What Is It and Why You Should Use It
12 Dec 2019 safeum news imgage Encryption is under threat - this is how it affects you
4 Nov 2019 safeum news imgage Should Big Decisions Be Based on Data or Your Intuition?
7 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage VPNFilter malware infecting 500,000 devices is worse than we thought
4 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Hackers target Booking.com in criminal bid to steal hundreds of thousands from customers
1 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Operator of World's Top Internet Hub Sues German Spy Agency
30 May 2018 safeum news imgage US says North Korea behind malware attacks
29 May 2018 safeum news imgage Facebook and Google targeted as first GDPR complaints filed
25 May 2018 safeum news imgage A new reason to not buy these cheap Android devices
24 May 2018 safeum news imgage Flaws in smart pet devices, apps could come back to bite owners
23 May 2018 safeum news imgage Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data
21 May 2018 safeum news imgage LocationSmart reportedly leaked phone location data onto the web
18 May 2018 safeum news imgage The SEC created its own scammy ICO to teach investors a lesson
17 May 2018 safeum news imgage Thieves suck millions out of Mexican banks in transfer heist
All news
SafeUM
Confidential Terms of Use Our technologies Company
Follow us
Download
SafeUM © Safe Universal Messenger

Axarhöfði 14,
110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015