ie8 fix
madison

Zero Day

Ryan Naraine, Emil Protalinski and Dancho Danchev

Typo'd Google domains in Top 10 malware exploit sites

By | June 4, 2009, 8:55am PDT

Summary: Misspelled versions of two popular Google services are among the Top 10 sites hosting exploits for use in drive-by malware download attacks. On the heels of two massive drive-by attacks — ten of thousands of hijacked sites launching attacks via the browser — Google released a list showing that malicious hackers are typo-squatting on its domains [...]

Misspelled versions of two popular Google services are among the Top 10 sites hosting exploits for use in drive-by malware download attacks.

On the heels of two massive drive-by attacks — ten of thousands of hijacked sites launching attacks via the browser — Google released a list showing that malicious hackers are typo-squatting on its domains to evade detection and to keep malware sites alive for long periods.

Here’s the top 10 list (click image for full size):

The list above contains domains referenced by hacked Web sites.  According to Google, all domains on the top-10 list are suspected to have compromised more than 10,000 web sites on the Internet

Google scans its index for dangerous Web sites and, according to Niels Provos, the company’s automated systems found more than 4,000 different sites that appeared to be set up for distributing malware by massively compromising popular web sites.

Of these domains more than 1,400 were hosted in the China’s .cn top level domain.

Several contained plays on the name of Google such as goooogleadsence.biz and googleanalystics.net.

As an example, he’s what Google’s Safebrowsing API is reporting for one of the typo-squatted attack sites:

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 17903 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-06-04, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-06-04.Malicious software includes 521 scripting exploit(s).

This site was hosted on 68 network(s) including AS21826 (Internet Cable Plus C. A.), AS8708 (RDSNET), AS39539 (NETONE).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, goooogleadsence.biz did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

Yes, this site has hosted malicious software over the past 90 days. It infected 10808 domain(s), including antique.gov.ph/, suratthani.m-society.go.th/, tesseract.mn/.

Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.

Topics

Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues.

Disclosure

Ryan Naraine

The most important disclosure is of my employment with Kaspersky Lab as a member of the global research and analysis team. Kaspersky Lab is a global company specializing in anti-malware and secure content management technologies. I do not own stocks or other investments in any technology company.

Biography

Ryan Naraine

Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues. He is currently security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab, an anti-malware company with operations around the globe. He is taking a leadership role in developing the company's online community initiative around secure content management technologies.

Prior to joining Kaspersky Lab, Ryan was Editor-at-Large/Security at eWEEK, leading the magazine's and Web site's coverage of Internet and computer security issues and managing the popular SecurityWatch blog, covering the daily threats, vulnerabilities and IT security technologies. He also covered IT security, hacker attacks and secure content management topics for Jupiter Media's internetnetnews.com.

Ryan can be reached at naraine SHIFT 2 gmail.com. For daily updates on Ryan's activities, follow him on Twitter.

Related Discussions on TechRepublic

Did you know you can take part in these discussions with your ZDNet membership?
3
Comments

Join the conversation!

Just In

RE: Typo'd Google domains in Top 10 malware exploit sites
birumut Updated - 2nd May 2011
Well done! Thank you very much for professional templates and community edition
seslisohbet seslichat
0 Votes
+ -
typo in the article
mavrommatis 5th Jun 2009
It's googleanalytLcs.net

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?
site=http://googleanalytlcs.net/
0 Votes
+ -
as usual
kat313 9th Jun 2009
There are usually several mistakes in the typing and/or spelling and/or grammar in the articles on this site.
0 Votes
+ -
Well done! Thank you very much for professional templates and community edition
seslisohbet seslichat

Join the conversation!

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]
ie8 fix
Click Here
ie8 fix

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

Facebook Activity

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources
ie8 fix
ie8 fix