Malware Planted on MySpace Once Again

Exploit Prevention Labs discovered the attack, one of several targeted MySpace pages. French funk band Greements of Fortune and Glasgow rock band Dykeenies were also targets of the Web-based attack.

"When a visitor visits the infected page, they're first hit by an exploit which installs malware in the background if they're not fully patched against the latest security vulnerabilities, and next they're presented with a fake codec which tells them they need to install a codec to view the video," said Roger Thompson, CTO at Exploit Prevention Labs. "So even if they're patched, they can fall victim to the exploit."

One Hack After Another
Specifically, visitors to these MySpace pages are directed to co8vd.cn/s. This appears to be a Chinese malware site. If the visitors accept the code installation, the site installs malicious software. You can view a video demonstration of the attack on YouTube.

The hack has some interesting characteristics, Thompson explained. "Perhaps most interesting, the bad guys are using a creative hack we haven't seen before: The HTML in the page contains some sort of image map, which basically makes it so you can click on anything over a wide area on the page and your click is directed to the malicious hyperlink," he said. "We tested it and even the ads were affected."

MySpace officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but Thompson reported that the popular social-networking site fixed the pages in question within hours of the discovery. However, yet another hack was discovered just a few hours later, and a new image code has appeared that Thompson warned could be coming online soon.