Defense in Depth

Read all 'coldwop.com' posts in Defense in Depth
July 2, 2008 11:35 AM PDT

Sony PlayStation site victim of SQL-injection attack

by Robert Vamosi
  • 5 comments

Early Wednesday, antivirus vendor Sophos reported that some visitors to the Sony PlayStation site may have been prompted to download an antivirus scanner.

Pages promoting the PlayStation games SingStar Pop and God of War contained SQL-injected code. Visitors to those specific game pages would see a fake antivirus scan , then a message that their computer was infected with different viruses and Trojan horses. Warned, the user would then be asked to purchase the scanner to remove the bogus malware.

The injected code linking to the scanner has since been removed.

Sophos said the attack could have downloaded malicious payloads, but did not.

Security researcher Dancho Danchev said in his ZDNet blog that Sony wasn't alone. It was one of 794 domains hit in the latest automated SQL-injection campaign using a multilayer fast-flux superstructure built around coldwop.com. Over the last 90 days, Google reports that 794 domains have been infected with code pointing to that domain. These are legitimate sites with vulnerabilities that allow criminal hackers to inject code pointing to their servers.

With fast-flux, a registered domain name stays the same while its node changes frequently, presumably thwarting any attempts to shut down the server hosting malicious content.

Danchev concludes: "If you don't take care of your Web application vulnerabilities, someone else will."

  • prev
  • 1
  • next
advertisement

15 sites that went kaput in 2009

Web sites launch all the time, but they also shut their doors. We highlight 15 that bit the dust this year.

Top 10 news stories of the decade

Let the debate begin: Was the iPhone more important than iTunes? Was anything bigger than Google finding a great business model? CNET offers its list of the 10 most important stories of the '00s.

About Defense in Depth

Covering computer viruses and computer crime, Robert Vamosi goes beyond the hype to provide you with expert interviews of the top security researchers, as well as offering the hands-on, nontechnical advice you'll need to stay safe online.

Add this feed to your online news reader

Defense in Depth topics

Most Discussed



advertisement

Inside CNET News

Scroll Left Scroll Right