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Zero Day

Ryan Naraine, Emil Protalinski and Dancho Danchev

Cryptome.org hacked, serving client-side exploits

By | February 14, 2012, 3:50pm PST

Summary: The popular whistle-blowing web site Cryptome.org, was recently hacked, and a malicious script was embedded on it pointing to a BlackHole web malware exploitation kit.

The popular whistle-blowing web site Cryptome.org, was recently hacked, and a malicious script was embedded on it pointing to a BlackHole web malware exploitation kit.

The BlackHole Web malware exploitation kit was serving client-side vulnerabilities from hxxp://65.75.137.243/Home/index.php with the IP currently offline.

Apparently, the attack was configured to only exploit users running Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, compared to a situation where the cybercriminals could have utilized BlackHole’s true multi-browser exploitation potential, and target multiple browsers.

According to Cryptome.org’s most recent note:

14 February 2012. 16:30GMT: Cryptome 100% restored with clean files. The Blackhole malware was removed on 12 February 2012. Apparently, according to the malware, only users of MS IE were targeted, bad enough.

Users are advised to ensure that they’re not running vulnerable third-party applications, and browser plugins.

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Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and cybercrime incident response.

Disclosure

Dancho Danchev

More details on Dancho Danchev's current and past professional affiliations, can be found in his LinkedIn profile.

Biography

Dancho Danchev

Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, and cybercrime incident response. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog sharing real-time threats intelligence data with the rest of the community on a daily basis. More details on Dancho Danchev's current and past professional affiliations, can be found in his LinkedIn profile. You can also follow him on Twitter

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Cryptome is a website hosted in the United States since 1996 by independent scholars and architects John Young and Deborah Natsios that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance.

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