California Government Site Bombarded with Pornography

A Californian government Website that was bombarded with huge volume of erotica and which induced the authorities to suspend the complete Internet and e-mail services of the state government near the start of October 2007 is again distributing malware, security investigators have discovered.

The Website hosted by the Marin County Transportation Authority has suffered the brunt of being attacked more than once earlier also.

On November 29, 2007 Alex Eckelberry, President at Sunbelt Software, in a message stated that the Transportation Authority of Marin Website was once more providing links that guided unsuspecting customers to a Web page that promoted malicious software camouflaged as a phony codec, reported eWeek on November 30, 2007.

Meanwhile, Eckelberry had erroneously concluded that starting from November 29, 2007 night, the Website had been rectified, but on November 30, Trend Micro's network architect Paul Ferguson informed eWEEK that the junk was still present there, reported eWEEK.

On November 30, 2007, more than a day after Sunbelt Software had initially informed about the comeback of the links through its post, the government Website was pervaded with more than twelve pages, which, when opened, would send customers to porn sites. After that, customers received an e-mail asking them to load a particular codec so as to see the subject matter. These alleged codecs held trojans that would surreptitiously insert malware.

As per Sunbelt Software's malware investigator Adam Thomas, the cyber-terrorists had presumably exploited the flaw in the favorite blogging program utilized by Website's blog. The junk e-mail, which had already been deleted, was apparently discovered only on the blog, as reported by virus BULLETIN on November 28, 2007.

During the last few months, the corruption of search buffer that was the property of Google and some other search engines has surfaced as a main method adopted by criminals to boost the overall position of their malevolent sites.

At present, the security experts at Google are rushing to remove a deluge of malevolent links that have cropped up. Trouble is that the suppliers of porn and malware are rapidly able to corrupt the cache with another fresh lot of domains.

Related article: Celebrity Image Used For Spamming Once Again

» SPAMfighter News - 12/12/2007