[pchelpers] News: Hacker's Toolkit Attacks Unpatched Computers

April 24, 2006
By  Gregg Keizer

A dirt-cheap, do-it-yourself hacking kit sold by a Russian Web site is 
being used by more than 1,000 malicious Web sites, a security company 
said Monday.

Those sites have confiscated hundreds of thousands of computers using 
the "smartbomb" kit, which sniffs for seven unpatched vulnerabilities in 
Internet Explorer and Firefox, then attacks the easiest-to-exploit weakness.

For $15 to $20, hackers can buy the "Web Attacker Toolkit," said San 
Diego-based Websense in an online alert. The tool, which uses a 
point-and-click interface, can be planted on malicious sites -- or on 
previously-compromised computers -- to ambush unsuspecting users.

"It puts a bunch of code on a site that not only detects what browser 
the victim is running, but then selects one of seven different 
vulnerabilities to exploit, depending on how well patched the browser 
is," said Dan Hubbard, senior director of security and research at Websense.

Both Firefox and Internet Explorer vulnerabilities are among the seven.

More here:
http://www.governmententerprise.com/news/186700539;jsessionid=L0WHDOYWM1142QSNDBOCKH0CJUMEKJVN

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