# Zeus botnet



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

Zeus is an extremely nasty botnet. It was jst discovered that it can exploit Adobe products.

Please make sure your Adobe products are up-to-date. And run a full scan on your hard drives soon.


----------



## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

Is there a new variant?
It's been around for quite a while.


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

I hope I'm not the only one getting really tired of Flash, PDF and Java vulnerabilities. It's one case where I'm rooting for Apple...If companies rework their pages to not use Flash so that they work on iPad, I'm all for it.


----------



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

MarlinGuy - Yep, new exploit in Adobe (Reader and Acrobat)


----------



## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175612/Zeus_botnet_exploits_unpatched_PDF_flaw

Patch due on Tuesday
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=6075&tag=nl.e550


----------



## Herdfan (Mar 18, 2006)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> Please make sure your Adobe products are up-to-date. And run a full scan on your hard drives soon.


Just updated them all and HDD scan will happen tonight.

Thanks for the tip!


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

This is but one of the reasons that Foxit Reader is starting to look good.

From a fleet maintenance standpoint, Java is the worst but Acrobat Reader is one of the few (other than the Microsoft updates) that seems to require a reboot on all versions of Windows.


----------



## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

dpeters11 said:


> I hope I'm not the only one getting really tired of Flash, PDF and Java vulnerabilities. It's one case where I'm rooting for Apple...If companies rework their pages to not use Flash so that they work on iPad, I'm all for it.


There is a reason you know.

All of them are extremely popular and widely used. They have huge adoption rates and thus are huge targets.

Anything that gets that popular and widespread is going to be targeted.


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Given the historical rate of adoption of W3C standards, don't hold your breath on the wide deployment of HTML5. As long as standards abhorrent browsers rule the day, moving forward will be next to impossible.


----------



## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

harsh said:


> Given the historical rate of adoption of W3C standards, don't hold your breath on the wide deployment of HTML5. As long as *standards abhorrent browsers* rule the day, moving forward will be next to impossible.


and the sad thing is that they all are.

Every major browser has its quirks.


----------



## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

At least for PDF's there are alternatives.
http://live.gnome.org/Evince/Downloads


----------



## Rob-NovA (Jan 10, 2008)

harsh said:


> This is but one of the reasons that Foxit Reader is starting to look good.
> 
> From a fleet maintenance standpoint, Java is the worst but Acrobat Reader is one of the few (other than the Microsoft updates) that seems to require a reboot on all versions of Windows.


Make sure you have the latest version of Foxit as well. The PDF vulnerability being discussed here is not Adobe specific but an attack on the PDF specification. Earlier versions of Foxit are also vulnerable to this.


----------



## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

People can talk about different things to use at home but companies make up more licenses than anything. When people get used to something at work they're primarily going to use it at home. The fact is if most of these small companies that have made a product became the attack of something big they would have the same issues. The biggest issue is we want entertainment not security. If people wanted security they wouldn't allow tons of things to run that usually are considered "essential" for online computer use.


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Rob-NovA said:


> Make sure you have the latest version of Foxit as well. The PDF vulnerability being discussed here is not Adobe specific but an attack on the PDF specification. Earlier versions of Foxit are also vulnerable to this.


I was speaking more to the relative stability of the program and upgrade mechanism as opposed to the inherent PDF problems.


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Grentz said:


> Every major browser has its quirks.


And, for whatever reason, W3C standards compliance has been to be inversely proportional to browser popularity since IE squeezed out Navigator.

It is for that reason that we need something that Microsoft cannot subvert. Silverlight isn't it (although it is less likely that Microsoft will try to do willful damage to it as it is their platform du jour -- for the moment).


----------



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

harsh,
As long as we still have people running Windows Me (home) or NT 4.0 (work), the world will continue to be vulnerable.

Many (certainly not all) issues would go away if folks had Windows 7 or the latest version of Mac OS.


----------



## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

Microsoft is not the only problem and far from the common denominator, in fact they have been on a better track in many ways towards compliance as at least they are evolving towards it. The others have been fairly stagnant.

Mozilla is completely separate from IE/MS yet still has plenty of quirks. Same case with Safari, same with Opera (which is one of the closer to standards compliance, but still screws up a LOT of sites), same with Chrome.


----------



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

I work in IT security, and the next wave of attacks is thought to be coming from malware spread via Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Be very careful when you open stuff from those type of sites. Remember, too, that the bad guys are very good at what they do and are outrunning some AV tools. Ironically, MS Security Essentials (a freebie) is probably your best bet for Windows today.


----------



## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

The main thing people don't realise is it has to be identified as a threat before it can be caught. A new virus, trojan, or worm runs rampant until it's detected. I laugh when people say they don't do stuff on the internet through their cell phone but are ok doing it on their computer. They don't realise it's actually safer on a cell phone.


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> As long as we still have people running Windows Me (home) or NT 4.0 (work), the world will continue to be vulnerable.


Most of the viruses for these platforms died long ago. It is a lot harder to take over an ME or NT machine because the services to support the attacks were never there.


> Many (certainly not all) issues would go away if folks had Windows 7 or the latest version of Mac OS.


I doubt this. While Microsoft and its fanboys like to make much of the public betas, they haven't put an end to the problems. Just last week, there were two remote execution security holes supposedly patched on Windows 7.

Apple's laundry lists tend to be longer as they're even more secretive about bugs.

I run Windows 2000 Professional barefoot at home and at work and I've only had one minor thrill in six years. Somehow it just seems a lot simpler when you're running an operating system that isn't always asking to reboot on you for one reason or another.


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Shades228 said:


> The main thing people don't realise is it has to be identified as a threat before it can be caught.


This is why they have been refining malware heuristics all along. They may not recognize the strain, but it still "feels" like a problem.


----------

