Asprox domains: 2/8/07

These are the currently active Asprox domains to check for. They are all very recently registrations.

• 8hcs.ru
• 98hs.ru
• bgsr.ru
• bywd.ru
• ibse.ru
• ncbw.ru
• nwj4.ru
• ojns.ru
• porv.ru
• uhwc.ru

Fake "Correspondence manager" job

Money mule scams are now very common - basically some poor fool ends up laundering money or reshipping goods following the instructions of someone they have never met and is likely to be untraceable.

This particular job offer seems to go a step further. This "correspondence manager" could well be another layer in the scammer's obfuscation. Perhaps the correspondence manager handles communications with the money mules?

One danger here is that this particular role is more credible that the "money for nothing" jobs that scammers usually offer. On the face of it, it doesn't involve handling money, but it does seem to be very easy and the salary looks attractive.

There's an interesting bit of social engineering where the email says "THE SELECTED CANDIDATE MUST PASS A CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK". Of course, it is the employer who needs to pass a background check too. Always verify that your job offers are from a genuine, verifiable business.

---

Subject: Re: WELL - PAID JOB!
From: ls51@salud.gov.pr
Date: Fri, August 1, 2008 11:52 am

Dear, Job Seeker!

Our firm has an opening vacancy: Correspondence manager.

Please attach your resume in DOC or reach text format and apply right now. This
position is limited.



Company Name
Global Logistic


Job Category
Correspondence


Location
United States


Position Type
Part-Time/Home Based


Salary
$ 35,000 - $ 50,000


Experience
1+


Desired Education Level
High School or Equivalent


Date Posted
March 17, 2008



Job Summary:
You will make some basic tasks from your manager daily; manage personal assets;
making simple correspondence operations. You don't need to have any kind of
education or experience. We will make online training for position offered. You
will have more information in job description document. Apply now.
Requirements: US citizenship or US permanent residency

High school or College in relevant field or 1+ years experience in management;
basic computer, good verbal and grammar skills; must have a cellular phone for
urgent tasks; must be able to work part-time; must provide resume for
qualification process.

ALL RESUMES WILL BE CONFIRMED AND VERIFIED. THE SELECTED CANDIDATE MUST PASS A
CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK
If you're interested send your full name, phone number, age and RESUME
mailto:NannieHolderCE@gmail.com and I'll redirect it to our HR department.

---

Beware of unsolicited loan offers

Loan scams are a another variant of the advanced fee fraud scam (e.g. fake lotteries, dead dictator's fortunes etc). These seem to be more popular recently due to the "credit crunch". Fundamentally the approach is the same as any other advanced fee fraud: you apply for the loan only to discover that there is a fee payable up front. Of course, no legitimate lender would ask for an up front fee for a loan.

Although the wording for this particular example sounds like it is from Nigeria, the IP address is from the Hathway network in Bangalore. Oddly from "from" address is Hathway too.

Subject: LOAN OFFER
From: ramanks@hathway.com
Date: Thu, July 31, 2008 8:14 pm
Priority: Normal


Dear Customer
We are corporate lenders. we give out loans to
A very honest and reliable personalities. we give
out our loans at low interest rate and moderate
values as cheap as 3% rate. Because of scam
we tender our qualifications if it satisfies, you
can continue with the transaction, but if you are
not satisfied you can go to another lender.
Channel your response to this email.
thomassteve2@gmail.com
Greatest Regards
Marketing Manager
Mr Thomas Steve.

Although this particular one is pretty laughable, it is likely that the scammers will get better at it. Beware of unsolicited loan offers and remember that all fees and interest will come out of your repayments, not from an up front fee.

PestPatrol: Zuten detected in c:\windows\minidump

This one looks like a false positive.. CA PestPatrol with signature version 2008.7.29.15 seems to be detecting Zuten in the c:\windows\minidump folder.

A close examination of the description indicates that the following files may be being misdetected:

%windows%\minidump\mini072908-01.dmp
%windows%\minidump\mini072908-02.dmp

As you can see, yesterday's date in encoded into the .dmp files. If your computer system has generated a .dmp file in the past day, then PestPatrol may well be mis-detecting it.

The SQL Injection war

Dancho Danchev had has some very good writeups on the current round of SQL injection attacks. This post on copycat attacks caught my eye, because it shows that there's more than one crew at work here.

If anything, this situation is likely to get worse. The tools needed to carry out a SQL injection attack are now almost available off-the-shelf, the attacks are obviously financially successful because they have been ongoing now for some months, and enumeration of vulnerable servers can be done through Google or Yahoo if you don't want to bother crawling the web.

Identifying and blocking domains helps, but it isn't a real solution. Most of these attacks are thwarted by a fully patch client (and I do mean all the software on the client, the Secunia Software Inspector can help here or some other decent audit tool). Using Firefox + NoScript is a good idea for the technically savvy. But ultimately, the best way of fighting this is to secure or shut down infected SQL servers. Don't be afraid to use the abuse@ email address where a web site is posing a continuing threat.

Asprox domains: 29/7/08

These are this morning's active Asprox domains. New ones are in bold.

• b4so.ru
• bce8.ru
• bjxt.ru
• bnsr.ru
• bosf.ru
• bsko.ru
• ch35.ru
• gty5.ru
• iroe.ru
• jve4.ru
• kj5s.ru
• kjwd.ru
• kpo3.ru
• kr92.ru
• ncb2.ru
• ncwc.ru
• nemr.ru
• njep.ru
• nmr43.ru
• oics.ru
• pfd2.ru
• po4c.ru

Asprox domains: 28/7/08

These seem to be the current Asprox domains to block or check for. New ones are in bold.

• bs04.ru
• bce8.ru
• bjxt.ru
• bnsr.ru
• bosf.ru
• bsko.ru
• ch35.ru
• iroe.ru
• jve4.ru
• kjwd.ru
• kodj.ru
• kpo3.ru
• kr92.ru
• ncb2.ru
• ncwc.ru
• nemr.ru
• nmr43.ru
• oics.ru
• pfd2.ru
• po4c.ru

ngg.js still seems to be the name of the javascript file injected into compromised hosts.

Asprox domains: 25/7/08

These domains seem to be active today, new ones in bold.

• bce8.ru
• ch35.ru
• iroe.ru
• jve4.ru
• kjwd.ru
• kodj.ru
• kpo3.ru
• kr92.ru
• ncwc.ru
• nemr.ru
• nmr43.ru
• pfd2.ru
• po4c.ru

One oddity - the URL zvz.cc/forums/8L0/join.upq has been spotted as a redirector for these Javascript exploits. Google list zvz.cc that as a malware infected site, it is hard to tell though if this is just another victim or part of the C&C for the botnet. For the record, these are the WHOIS details.. but they might not mean very much.

Registration Service Provided By: ESTDOMAINS INC
Contact: +1.3027224217
Website: http://www.estdomains.com

Domain Name: ZVZ.CC

Registrant:
Himpet .Inc
Evgenij Novoberkov (zvz@tut.by)
Stahanov.St 120
Minsk
Missouri,222120
US
Tel. +022.2720771

Creation Date: 09-Apr-2008
Expiration Date: 09-Apr-2009

Domain servers in listed order:
ns2.zvz.cc
ns1.zvz.cc

Administrative Contact:
Himpet .Inc
Evgenij Novoberkov (zvz@tut.by)
Stahanov.St 120
Minsk
Missouri,222120
US
Tel. +022.2720771

Technical Contact:
Himpet .Inc
Evgenij Novoberkov (zvz@tut.by)
Stahanov.St 120
Minsk
Missouri,222120
US
Tel. +022.2720771

Billing Contact:
Himpet .Inc
Evgenij Novoberkov (zvz@tut.by)
Stahanov.St 120
Minsk
Missouri,222120
US
Tel. +022.2720771

Status:ACTIVE

Asprox: jve4.ru, nmr43.ru and po4c.ru

Three new Asprox domains that have gone live in the past few hours, probably some more on the way. Either block these or check your logs if you are a network admin.

• jve4.ru
• nmr43.ru
• po4c.ru

"ABT Solutions" scam email

Following on from the recent "Infopulse" scam, another Ukranian firm has been targeted by the money mule operators. ABT Solutions appears to be a legitimate and quite innocent company that has been around for a few years, but this email does not come from ABT Solutions. The [fake] name used in the email is very similar to the name used in the abtsolutions.net WHOIS data, it is likely that it has been lifted from there.

Two telltale signs - one is the use of a Google Mail address where you would expect it to come from abtsolutions.net, the other one is that the job offer appears to be too good to be true. The company name is also spelled incorrectly.

---

Subject: A proposal for collaboration. Additional revenue.
From: job.abtsolutions@gmail.com
Date: Wed, July 23, 2008 11:07 pm

Hello Sir/Madam,

I am Chebotar' Aurelian, Director of ABT Solutins
specializes in innovative IT solutions and complex software projects development.

My company based in Ukraine. We've earned ourselves a reputation of a
reliable and trustworthy partner working successfully with a number of
West European companies and providing them with reliable software
development services in financial and media sectors.
Unfortunately we are currently facing some difficulties with receiving
payments for our services. It usually takes us 10-30 days to receive
a payment and clearing from your country and such delays are harmful
to our business. We do not have so much time to accept every wire transfer.

That's why we are currently looking for partners in your country to help
us accept and process these payments faster.
If you are looking for a chance to make an additional profit you can
become our representative in your country. As our representative you will
receive 8% of every deal we conduct. Your job will be accepting funds in
the form of wire transfers and forwarding them to us.
It is not a full-time job, but rather a very convenient and fast way
to receive additional income. We also consider opening an office in your
country in the nearest future and you will then have certain privileges
should you decide to apply for a full-time job. Please if you are
interested in transacting business with us we will be very glad.

Please contact me for more information via email:

and send us the following information about yourself: job.abtsolutions@gmail.com

1. Your Full Name as it appears on your resume.
2. Education.
3. Your Contact Address.
4. Telephone/Fax number.
5. Your present Occupation and Position currently held.
6. Your Age

Please respond and we will provide you with additional details on how you
can become our representative. Joining us and starting business today will
cost you nothing and you will be able to earn a bit of extra money fast
and easy. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us
with all your questions.

Sincerely,
Chebotar' Aurelian,
Director of ABT Solutins.

---

Asprox domains: 23/7/08 - Part II

Just a couple more to add:

• cgt4.ru
• kc43.ru

Asprox domains: 23/7/08

A shift in domains used by the Asprox crew - these new domains are all in the .ru TLD and are registered via NauNet (contact details here). ngg.js is still the name of the Javascript file to look for, I suspect that vrcgoo.js might be a new name to keep an eye out for too.

• 4cnw.ru
• 4vrs.ru
• 5kc3.ru
• 90mc.ru
• 9jsr.ru
• bts5.ru
• chds.ru
• cvsr.ru
• d5sg.ru
• ecx2.ru
• gb53.ru
• h23f.ru
• jex5.ru
• jvke.ru
• keec.ru
• keje.ru
• kgj3.ru
• lkc2.ru
• lksr.ru

For most organisations, blocking the entire .ru TLD will probably do no harm as these are usually always Russian language sites.

"Infopulse Ukraine Ltd" Money Mule Scam

Infopulse Ukraine appears to be a legitimate software development company, but this email that claims to be from them is certainly not legitimate. Tell-tale signs are the free email address (rather than using infopulse.com.ua and the fact that this sort of money transfer operation appears to be an easy way to earn money doing very little.. which means that it will be some sort of money laundering operation. Avoid.

---

Subject: Earning additional salary with us!
From: jobinfopulse@gmail.com
Date: Wed, July 16, 2008 4:56 pm

Hello Sir/Madam,

I am Alexey Sigov, Director of Infopulse Ukraine Ltd
specializes in innovative IT solutions and complex software projects development.

My company based in Ukraine. We've earned ourselves a reputation of a
reliable and trustworthy partner working successfully with a number of
West European companies and providing them with reliable software
development services in financial and media sectors.
Unfortunately we are currently facing some difficulties with receiving
payments for our services. It usually takes us 10-30 days to receive
a payment and clearing from your country and such delays are harmful
to our business. We do not have so much time to accept every wire transfer.

That's why we are currently looking for partners in your country to help
us accept and process these payments faster.
If you are looking for a chance to make an additional profit you can
become our representative in your country. As our representative you will
receive 8% of every deal we conduct. Your job will be accepting funds in
the form of wire transfers and forwarding them to us.
It is not a full-time job, but rather a very convenient and fast way
to receive additional income. We also consider opening an office in your
country in the nearest future and you will then have certain privileges
should you decide to apply for a full-time job. Please if you are
interested in transacting business with us we will be very glad.

Please contact me for more information via email:

and send us the following information about yourself: jobinfopulse@gmail.com

1. Your Full Name as it appears on your resume.
2. Education.
3. Your Contact Address.
4. Telephone/Fax number.
5. Your present Occupation and Position currently held.
6. Your Age

Please respond and we will provide you with additional details on how you
can become our representative. Joining us and starting business today will
cost you nothing and you will be able to earn a bit of extra money fast
and easy. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us
with all your questions.

Sincerely,
Alexey Sigov,
Director of Infopulse Ukraine Ltd

---

Asprox domains: 16/7/08

The following Asprox SQL Injection domains appear to be active today. New ones are in bold.

• adwnetw.com
• adpzo.com
• ausbnr.com
• brcporb.ru
• btoperc.ru
• cdport.eu
• cdrpoex.com
• gbradde.tk
• grtsel.ru
• korfd.ru
• movaddw.com
• tctcow.com
• usabnr.com

ngg.js still seems to be the name of the script file. Block these sites and/or check your logs.

Asprox domains: 15/7/08

Another bunch of Asprox SQL Injection domains, new ones are in bold.

• adpzo.com
• adwnetw.com
• ausbnr.com
• bkpadd.mobi
• butdrv.com
• cdport.eu
• cdrpoex.com
• cliprts.com
• gbradde.tk
• gbradp.com
• gitporg.com
• hdrcom.com
• loopadd.com
• movaddw.com
• nopcls.com
• porttw.mobi
• pyttco.com
• tctcow.com
• tertad.mobi
• usabnr.com

These are still using ngg.js in the injected code.

"I'm customer from Singapore.."

If you sell any kind of high-value goods (or even if you have a web site that just mentions them) then you probably get all sorts of fraudulent emails.

One in particular is the "Customer from Singapore" email of which the following is an example.

---

Subject: special order
From: "Tony Canna"
Date: Fri, July 11, 2008 7:45 am

I'm customer from Singapore ,and I would like to purchase some products from your
company,but before we doing bussines,I need your answers for my questions
below.

1.Do you accept credit card for payment?
2.Do you ship overseas via UPS,DHL or FedEX Service ?

Thanks before for the attentions and we are glad to doing more bussines with
your company.

I look Forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Regards,
Tony Canna

---

Singapore is a pretty good place to do business with. Crime and corruption are very low, and you could be reasonably certain that business transactions from with Singapore would be 100% legitimate. The problem with this email is that the sender isn't from Singapore at all, but from neighbouring Indonesia as an examination of the mail headers shows. At the risk of offending Indonesian readers.. well.. put it this way - Indonesia is a much more tricky place to do business with.

Another telltale mark of a fraud is the phrase "Special order". I don't know why, but these scammers often like to mark their emails with this. Go figure.

This Indonesian/Singaporean scam is actually quite common, so be cautious about people claiming to be from Singapore, check mail headers carefully and check that the delivery address is a real business or residential address if you can (rather than some warehouse at an airport, for example).

"Dibag Industries AG" money mule scam

A money mule scam pretending to come from Dibag Industries AG - clearly trying to pass itself off as the wholly legitimate Dibag Industriebau AG who have nothing to do with it.

Of course there is a PayPal Germany and $78,000 a year for an Office Assistant is probably a little on the high side..

---

Subject: Office Assistant Required - 1500/week

We are a Germany company, we are doing business all over the Europe, our main
activities are real estate investments and digital currencies exchanges.
As a result of expading our business in North American region, our company must keep
up with our American customers accepting the most popular payments in the United
States: Paypal. We are currently seeking an dependable and enthusiastic US
representative to handle the transactions.
Being located in Germany, a transfer via Paypal system sent here can take up to 14
days to arrive, therefore we need a US representative with an US paypal account who
able to accept the payments from our US customers.
This will significantly improve our business, that's why we can pay 5% from every
transfer processed.
Almost anyone is accepted, but a verified paypal account is required, an account
where you will be receiving the transfers.
If you are interested to find more about this position, let me know at:
martin_rohwerder@live.com

Thank you,
Martin Rohwerder
Dibag Industries AG

---

Asprox domains: 10/7/08

These seem to be the currently active Asprox SQL Injection domains to block or check for. New ones are in bold.

• adwnetw.com
• ausadd.com
• ausbnr.com
• bnsdrv.com
• butdrv.com
• cdrpoex.com
• crtbond.com
• destad.mobi
  
• destbnp.com
• drvadw.com
• gbradw.com
• loopadd.com
• movaddw.com
• nopcls.com
• porttw.mobi
• pyttco.com
  
• tertad.mobi
  
• usaadw.com
• usabnr.com

No prizes for guessing that Vivids Media GmbH handled the registrations.

Two more new ones as well:

• bkpadd.mobi
• tctcow.com

ZoneAlarm: "The firewall has blocked Internet access to.."

If you have recently patched your Windows computer with KB951748 and have ZoneAlarm installed then you'll probably find that everything has stopped working with a message similar to:

ZoneAlarm Security Alert
Protected
The firewall has blocked Internet access to whatever.com (0.0.0.0) (HTTP) from your computer (TCP Flags: S)

This is because the Microsoft patch you just applied has made some fairly significant changes to the way your PC looks up internet names (such as web pages, email hosts etc) and ZoneAlarm isn't aware of those changes and is consequently having a panic.

It isn't really a fault with the patch, and given the nature of the change, you can perhaps expect ZoneAlarm not to cope [see note below]. If you really want some more technical background read this article at the Internet Storm Center: Multiple Vendors DNS Spoofing Vulnerability.

As a temporary workaround, the best advice is to deinstall the KB951748 until ZoneAlarm is updated. It is an important update, but you are either going to have to disable ZoneAlarm or remove the patch and at the moment my advice would be to stick with ZoneAlarm.

To remove the patch in Windows XP (Vista will be similar):

1. Click Start and select Control Panel (or Start.. Settings.. Control Panel depending on your setup).
2. Open "Add or Remove Programs"
3. Tick "Show Updates"
4. Scroll down (probably very near the bottom of the list) to Security Update for Windows XP (KB951748) (Vista may be worded differently, but the key thing to look for is KB951748).
5. Click Remove
6. Follow the steps to remove the patch and then reboot

Keep an eye out on the ZoneAlarm Official Announcements forum for updates - hopefully your copy of ZoneAlarm should download a fix for it automatically. When you have downloaded the update for ZoneAlarm, then visit Windows Update and then reapply the patch.

Update 1:
Sandi made the following comment:

It is not necessary to uninstall the patch, or disable/remove Zonealarm. Simply reset the ZoneAlarm database:

http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=cfg&message.id=52727

"To solve this, just reset the ZA database and the ZA will be "fresh" as when it was first installed:


Boot your computer into the Safe Mode
Navigate to the c:\windows\internet logs folder
Delete the backup.rdb, iamdb.rdb, *.ldb and the tvDebug files in the folder
Clean the Recycle Bin
Reboot into the normal mode
ZA will be just like new with no previous settings or data


Once this is finished, reboot back into the normal mode and in the new network found windows, set the new network to Trusted.
Then do this to ensure the ZA is setup properly:

Make sure your DNS and DHCP server IP's are in your Firewall's Trusted zone. Finding DNS and DCHP servers, etc

1. Go to Run and type in command and hit 'ok', and in the command then type in ipconfig /all then press the enter key. In the returned data list will be a line DNS and DHCP Servers with the IP address(s) listed out to the side. Make sure there is a space between the ipconfig and the /all, and the font is the same (no capitals).
2. In ZA on your machine on the Firewall, open the Zones tab, click Add and then select IP Address. Make sure the Zone is set to Trusted. Add the DNS IP(s) .
3. Click OK and Apply. Then do the same for the DHCP server.
4. The localhost (127.0.0.1) must be listed as Trusted.
5. The Generic Host Process (svchost.exe) as seen in the Zone Alarm's Program's list must have server rights for the Trusted Zone.
Plus it must have both Trusted and Internet Access."

Update 2:
ZoneAlarm have a press release with a couple of workarounds here.

Workaround to Sudden Loss of Internet Access Problem

Date Published : 8 July 2008

Date Last Revised : 9 July 2008

Overview : Microsoft Update KB951748 is known to cause loss of internet access for ZoneAlarm users on Windows XP/2000. Windows Vista users are not affected.

Impact : Sudden loss of internet access

Platforms Affected : ZoneAlarm Free, ZoneAlarm Pro, ZoneAlarm AntiVirus, ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware, and ZoneAlarm Security Suite

Recommended Actions -

Download and install the latest versions which solve the loss of internet access problem here:

ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite

ZoneAlarm Pro

ZoneAlarm Antivirus

ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware

ZoneAlarm Basic Firewall

- or follow the directions below.

Option 1: Move Internet Zone slider to Medium

1. Navigate to the "ZoneAlarm Firewall" panel
2. Click on the "Firewall" tab
3. Move the "Internet Zone" slider to medium

Option 2: Uninstall the hotfix

1. Click the "Start Menu"
2. Click "Control Panel", or click "Settings" then "Control Panel"
3. Click on "Add or Remove Programs"
4. On the top of the add/remove programs dialog box, you should see a checkbox that says "show updates". Select this checkbox
5. Scroll down until you see "Security update for Windows (KB951748)"
6. Click "Remove" to uninstall the hotfix

I must say what is kind of annoying about this whole thing is that ZoneAlarm is owned by Checkpoint who will definitely have been in on the whole DNS update issue and could have updated the product in a more timely manner. Many users of ZoneAlarm have been left high and dry because they don't have the technical skills to fix this.

Asprox domains: 9/7/08

Another shift in the Asprox SQL Injection domains, still registered with Vivids Media GmbH. As ever, check your logs or block them.

• adwnetw.com
• ausadd.com
• ausbnr.com
• bnsdrv.com
• butdrv.com
• cdrpoex.com
• cliprts.com
• crtbond.com
• destbnp.com
• drvadw.com
• gbradp.com
• gbradw.com
• hdrcom.com
• loopadd.com
• movaddw.com
• nopcls.com
• tctcow.com
• usaadp.com
• usaadw.com
• usabnr.com