Malware Plays on Patch Tuesday

By Greg McNevin

October 14, 2008: Malware writers are targeting Microsoft’s traditional “patch Tuesday” this week, with an email masquerading as an update from Microsoft’s official update centre hitting inboxes with a malicious payload.

The emails come from what to the naked eye appears to be a real microsoft.com address and sports a subject reading “Security Update for OS Microsoft Windows”.

Attached is a file that if run, creates a backdoor to the user’s machine, enabling it to be potentially turned into a bot or, if it is a corporate machine, give a hacker access to a corporate network.

The attack is standard phishing fare, however, it does include some extra touches to ensnare users, including a PGP signature block at the bottom of the email.

As always, the best protection is a wary attitude towards unsolicited emails, however, those with restrictions on incoming executables should also be protected.

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