Malware on Hijacked Subdomains, a New Trend? 24
The Unmask Parasites blog discusses a technique attackers are using more and more often recently: modifying a compromised site's DNS settings to redirect various subdomains to different IPs that serve up malware, often leaving site administrators none the wiser. Quoting:
"It is clear that hackers have figured out that subdomains of legitimate websites are an almost infinite source of free domain names for their attack sites. With access to DNS settings, they can create arbitrary subdomains that point to their own servers. Such subdomains can hardly be noticed by domain owners who rarely check their DNS records after the initial domain configuration. And they cost nothing to hackers. I wonder if using hijacked subdomains of legitimate websites is a new trend in malware distribution or just a temporarily solution that won't be widely adopted by cybercriminals in the long run (like dynamic DNS domains last September)."
Also done with 404 Error Documents (Score:5, Informative)
This is also done with 404 Error pages. They change it to redirect to their spam, and then point people at what looks like a legitimate URL. Then they get redirected to the spam and are none the wiser. www.slashdot.org/thisdoesntexist could redirect anywhere.
Re:Also done with 404 Error Documents (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed 404, 301, 302. Anything that you can drop a .htaccess file into an account.
Ideally, web servers (not just DNS) have a lot of holes, allowing NS access to the user isn't the problem like the TFA implies. Because most automation software doesn't allow for too much sub domain specific flexibility, most times you still need to be in root to redirect at a dns level.
The exception is say parking (godaddy etc) or zoneedit but usually once its hosted it's pretty much in the hands of the admin to delegate externally.
Re:Also done with 404 Error Documents (Score:4, Informative)
As a malware defense professional.. (Score:5, Informative)