Bloggers battered by viral storm

[TechBear_Seattle]

FYI.

Bloggers battered by viral storm

Google's Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.

The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a Windows PC.

Infected computers are being hijacked by the gang behind the attacks and either mined for saleable data or used for other attacks.

The Blogger attack is the latest in a series by a gang that has managed to hijack hundreds of thousands of PCs.

The article continues at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6970368.stm

[Gman]

1. Only one thing to say:

[blogslut]

2. Bots

They are the devil. And so very sophisticated. At the message board I moderate, we got a bot attack going on. Before we resorted to hand-approving new members, these bots would join, confirm the membership, and begin posting threads within moments. Naturally, they posted links to trojan infected pages. We would ban then, ban the IPs and still they kept coming. They could post in and/or start threads up to 20 times within five minutes.

Fucking bots.

[Bitwit1234]

6. Same as certain spams shots

The use names with different IPS block and turn them to spam and they come back with a different name and IP. It is ridiculous. And I would never download or click on to any link, unless I knew the addy before hand.

[AnnInLa]

3. Kos had this going on yesterday

Seems that, in the wee hours of the morning, someone posted a diary with a malicious link in it. When clicking on the link, it took you to a site that did all sorts of bad things to your computer. It made me think of all of the links I click on within DU postings. I guess we should be more careful, because that trojan that infected Kos could post using anyone's name.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. That is one of the reasons I posted this

There are a lot of bloggers here, and a lot more who read blogs.

If any moderators are reading this thread, it might be prudent to disable the link: tag, for a while at least. If the domain of a link is easily visible, it will be easier for people to decide whether or not a link is probably safe (wikipedia, BBC, news.yahoo, etc.) or might be risky.

[Tesha]

5. PC users: sheep waiting to be shorn. Ah well... (NT)

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Baaaa...

[Blackhatjack]

7. What if the govt shut down the liberal opposition sites during martial law this way?....

Could 'bots' infect entire liberal sites during an incident of 'martial law' making it impossible to use sites like DU, DKOS, etc.???

I don't see how site administrators could stop it if the 'bot attacks' were massive and concentrated.

Another concern is that the government could duplicate and redirect 'infected' members to counterfeit sites. THis would not fool computer savvy members, but just imagine how many posters at the DU are not computer savvy?