Verisign Accused of Not Taking Action Against Malware Spreading Websites

Andrew Fried, CEO of Deteque and a former senior special agent at the US Department of the Treasury, claims that Verisign has failed to take any action against numerous websites circulating malware, as per the news by ITBusinessEdge on February 14, 2010.

The websites have .com and .in domains and are registered by domain name registrars in Turkey and Russia. These websites were first emerged on February 1, 2010. Moreover, these websites have been thrusting a Russian exploit kit known as 'JustExpolit' that uses Java flaws to attack systems.

The registrars of domain names in Turkey and Russia have not taken any action to get rid of them though the problem has been reported by security experts that control harmful activity on the Web.

Verisign, a registry service that manages .net and .com domains, has been informed about the issue but seems to have been inactive to take action to deal with the issue Almost 1 day after Verisign has been reported about the issue, the harmful domains are active and still serving malware.

While answering, a Verisign spokeswoman informed that the firm came to know about the dangerous domains on February 2, 2010. The firm immediately contacted the respective registrars, and is working with them to confirm the information, as per the news by ComputerWorld on February 3, 2010.

It is should be noted that Fried disclosed this issue in the BlackHat security conference held in Washington D.C. During the Conference, Fried highlighted the issue of non cooperation by some countries like Russia and China to help fight against cyber security risks. Fried also said that a US based entity like Verisign also expressed similar attitude which was quite surprising and amusing, as per the reports by IDG.es on February 4, 2010.

Finally, the security experts stated that the case throws light on hackers' trend of using fast flux networks to hide the servers circulating malware or concealing sites spam. The problem is that these servers are difficult to trace. But the best way to lessen the malware circulation is to search websites and unregister the domains.

Related article: Viruses Pose Biggest Threat to Asian Companies

» SPAMfighter News - 2/13/2010