"Belmoo" Malware exploit Firefox 0day vulnerability on Nobel Peace Prize website

[amitraina]

Malicious hackers have exploited an unpatched vulnerability in the latest version of Firefox to attack people visiting the Nobel Peace Prize website, a Norway-based security firm said on Tuesday.

Mozilla representatives confirmed a "critical vulnerability" in versions 3.5 and 3.6 of the open-source browser. It came several hours after the organization members were said to have made the same admission on this password-protected Bugzilla page: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=607222
According to Einar Oftedal, a detection executive at Norman ASA in Oslo, the official website for the Nobel Peace prize, nobelpeaceprize.org, was compromised so that it contained an iframe link to a malicious server.

“This iframe has a multi exploit backend and serves exploits for Firefox, including a working remote exploit for firefox 3.6.11,” he said in an instant message to The Register. “We didn't see any 0day for IE,” he added, referring to Microsoft's browser.

He said the attack exploited a race condition vulnerability in Firefox to force end users to install malware his firm has dubbed Belmoo: http://norman.com/security_center/vi...rchive/129146/
The Windows executable was created on Sunday and attempts to connect to several internet addresses, according to his analysis.

If the addresses resolve, “the malware attaches a command shell to the opened socket, giving an attacker access on the local computer with the same rights as the logged on user.” If not, the malware will exit.

If Norman's report proves accurate, it's the first time in recent memory attackers have exploited an unpatched vulnerability in Firefox:http://norman.com/about_norman/press...2010/129223/en
Most so-called zero-day attacks are perpetrated against Adobe Reader or Flash Player, Microsoft software and to a lesser extent Oracle's Java. The report is also unusual because the attack didn't appear to target other applications, as is typical with exploit packages.

Hours after the reports surfaced, Mozilla said it would issue a fix as soon as possible: http://blog.mozilla.com/security/201...d-firefox-3-6/
In the meantime, users can protect themselves by disabling JavaScript altogether or installing the NoScript extension that allows users to control which websites are permitted to run JavaScript. Download NoScript: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/
The reported attack comes less than three weeks after jailed Chinese dissent Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize. The 54-year-old former university professor was sentenced in December to 11 years in prison for co-authoring Charter 08, a manifesto that strongly condemned China's one-party Communist government. Beijing considers him a criminal and has voiced its discontent to Norway.

[JayCub]

Thank you for the information amitrainia, pity those idiots managed to exploit FireFox on what you would think would be a great site to visit and read,

[INDRANIL]

Thanks for the heads up .

[safeguy]

According to Mozilla, the underlying flaw is present in both Firefox 3.5 and 3.6, but only recent versions of 3.6 were targeted by JS_NINDYA.A. In addition, if the user is running newer versions of Windows (such as Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008, and Server 2008 R2), the exploit will not be triggered either.

As for the Firefox vulnerability, the latest Firefox 4 beta versions are confirmed to be safe from these exploits. Mozilla has also recommended the NoScript extension to mitigate future attacks until a patch is issued.

Source: http://blog.trendmicro.com/firefox-zero-day-found-in-compromised-nobel-peace-prize-website/

Seems like they're targeting particularly at XP users. Those running Vista/7 are 'spared'...why? Is it because of UAC? In any case, if you are using XP, SRP or an anti-executable is likely helpful to mitigate against this I assume.

According to researcher, the trojan installer was created on Sunday and drops a file called symantec.exe in the %WINDOWS%\temp folder. The file name was clearly chosen to mislead users, and so is the “Microsoft Windows Update” name used for the start-up registry entries created under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.

The malware also tries to connect to two different addresses pointing to a server in Taiwan. It tries different ports and if any attempt is successful, it opens a local shell. An attacker located at the other end can then use it to execute commands with the privileges of the current user.

Source: http://cyberinsecure.com/nobel-peace-prize-website-compromised-infects-visitors-through-zero-day-firefox-vulnerability/

I'm wondering if this malware is able to achieve much under a LUA account (user-mode malware)? Perhaps that's why they decided to 'leave out' Vista/7 users?