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Interesting malware…affecting the Delphi Compiler?, (Fri, Aug 21st)

Admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:29:43 +0000

A number of anti-virus vendors are reporting new malware that takes a slightly different approach than the norm.
BitDefender and Kaspersky refer to the virus as Win32.Induc.A.
What is different about this virus is that it compromises systems running the Delphi compiler. Once the compiler itself is compromised all resulting code generated by the compiler is also infected. The virus is relatively simple in that it only wants to propogate, no other payload has been utilized.
A funny side effect is that in the few days since this virus has been detected in the wild, a number of trojans have been discovered to be affected with the virus. Obviously they were compiled with an infected Delphi compiler.
According to the people over at BitDefender the easiest way to detect if your Delphi instance is infected is to check if their compilers’ Lib folder contains a SysConst.bak file (the most obvious sign of infection) and to rename it to SysConst.dcu if it exists, overwriting the compromised file, then recompile their applications.
Special thanks to reader Artyom for pointing us to this story.
Update:
A commenter dusted some cobwebs out of my brain by pointing to a paper I read as a lowly undergrad some 25 years ago. Ken Thompson of Bell Labs fame presented a paper to the Turing Award Lecture entitled Reflections on Trusting Trust. In this paper Mr. Thompson mentions the concept of compromising the Unix login binary by first infecting the compiler.
– Rick Wanner – rwanner at isc dot sans dot org

Time to update…New Thunderbird version!, (Fri, Aug 21st)

Admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:29:43 +0000

A new version of Thunderbird, version 2.0.0.23, is available. Thus update fixes MFSA 2009-42 (Compromise of SSL-protected communication).
If you are a Thunderbird user, it is probably best to apply this update as soon as convenient.
Update:
It appears this update, which affects multiple Mozilla products, has changed the rules for security certificates generated with wildcards. More information is available at the Fourmilab Blog.
– Rick Wanner – rwanner at isc dot sans dot org

FINDWHAT buys ESpotting

Admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:29:43 +0000

Amid all of the rumors of Yahoo buying eSpotting, FindWhat slips though the cracks and aquires the company. FindWhat.com, an Internet search engine operator, said on Wednesday that it is buying privately-owned Espotting Media Inc. for $163 million to create an Internet marketing company.

Google Expands Advertising with AdSense

Admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:29:43 +0000

Google has just introduced a new advertising program which lets smaller web sites run Google advertisements on their sites and get paid per click by Google.
This is an expansion of their AdWords program which added Contextual
AdWords earlier in the year.
To apply online for the program, website publishers can visit www.google.com/adsense. Google’s editorial team will review each publisher application to ensure that the site meets editorial guidelines. To activate the service, the publisher logs into their account and cuts and pastes a small piece of HTML into their web pages or ad server.

Whats In Here?

Admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:21:19 +0000

Welcome to Pingpulse, our great new blog on everything digital including Freeware in all it’s forms, Graphics, Internet, the operating system Linux and various software.

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