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New PDF exploit being circulated in high volume: Fortinet
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 09 June 2010, 18:10 IST
Bangalore: Fortinet, a network security provider announced that its May 2010 Threatscape report showed a new PDF exploit being circulated in high volume through an ongoing spam campaign. The vulnerability, first blogged about by Didier Stevens on March 29, 2010, is CVE-2010-1240, and the malicious documents now exploiting this are detected by Fortinet as PDF/Pidief.BV!exploit. Though no patch exists, Adobe has recommended mitigation strategies on its blog.
To further combat the threat, Fortinet recommends implementing an intrusion prevention and ant ivirus solution. This vulnerability was ranked second for overall malware activity this month, behind only the nefarious Pushdo botnet. "What sets PDF/Pidief.BV apart from other PDF threats we are seeing, is that it requires user interaction," said Derek Manky, Project Manager, Cyber Security and Threat Research, Fortinet. "More specifically, a user needs to click on the 'open' button when prompted by a dialog box to initiate the infection. This threat is another reason why it's imperative for users to carefully read these types of messages when they appear." In the case of PDF/Pidief.BV, clicking "open" will first execute VBScript and then add a malicious botnet loader binary, which compromises the system.
Botnet activity remained strong this report, with Gumblar and Sasfis present in both the Top 10 Attack and Top 10 Malware lists. Though the main botnets such as Pushdo, Cutwail and Sasfis continue to pose significant threats, newer botnets are emerging. We first saw the CMultiLoader botnet in the wild on April 8, 2010. A variant of this botnet, W32/CMultiLoader.A, has landed in the sixth spot in our Top 10 Malware list this report. The Katusha botnet just missed our Top 10 list this report, ranking 11. These are two examples of up and coming botnets that are making waves.
Fortinet detects the Katusha sample as W32/Katusha.1824!tr. Total detected malware volume for this report has remained fairly consistent since the beginning of the year, though distinct detection continues to rise. This indicates more variations of malware circulating in cyberspace as malware creators continue to pack, encrypt and morph their malicious binaries.
