'gumblar' Attacks Spreading Quickly

[Peaches]

May 19, 2009 7:04 AM PDT

'Gumblar' attacks spreading quickly

by Matthew Broersma

"The attackers behind a series of rapidly spreading Web site compromises have begun using a new domain to deliver their malicious code, security experts say.

The attacks, collectively referred to as "Gumblar" by ScanSafe and "Troj/JSRedir-R" by Sophos, grew 188 percent over the course of a week, ScanSafe said late last week. The Gumblar infections accounted for 42 percent of all infections found on Web sites last week, Sophos said.

Over the weekend, the Chinese Web domain used to deliver the malicious code--gumblar.cn--stopped responding, according to Unmask Parasites, a service used to detect malicious code embedded in Web pages. The attacks' malicious payload has, however, continued to be delivered from a different source, the martuz.cn domain, Unmask Parasites said Monday in an advisory.

"They have slightly modified the script and now inject a new version that loads malicious content from a new domain," Unmask Parasites said.

Changes to the script make it more difficult to identify and stop detection by the Google Chrome browser, Unmask Parasites said.

Gumblar was first detected in March and has spread more quickly since then, against the expectations of security experts."

More details at CNET - http://news.cnet.com/security/