Definition of Irony: Anti virus Company Gets Hacked

I couldn't believe it when I read it! According to a recent post on IT Business Edge's Headline Watch, an Indian anti virus company called AVsoft Technologies, makers of SmartCop, had one of their download servers hacked and made to distribute a variant of the Virut virus.

Doing a search for SmartCop on Google turns up the company's website, S-Cop.com, but if you click on the link you get this lovely block page from Google to protect your curious ass from malicious code on the company's servers:






Infoworld also reported on this unusually funny event. This is taken from InfoWorld:

The download section of AvSoft's S-cop Web site hosts the malicious code, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor AVG. "They let one of their pages get hit by an iFrame injection," he said. "It shows that anyone can be a victim.... It's hard to protect Web servers properly."

The technique used on the site has been seen in thousands of similar hacks over the past few months. The attackers open an invisible iFrame Window within the victim's browser, which redirects the client to another server. That server, in turn, launches attack code that attempts to install malicious software on the victim's computer. Read the full story here (Infoworld Story).

This just goes to show you that nobody is safe on the internet, not even a supposed security software company. It also shows you the importance of regularly patching your systems to prevent such attacks. It's a dangerous world out there on the internets people, and there are dangerous guys looking for easy prey. Don't let your systems be the easy target.

Posted in: anti virus, avsoft technologies, hacked, s-cop, smartcop, virut virus