Captcha Protected Malware

The Blue Coat Security Group has written about a new way of distributing malware on the web. A few new official looking corporate type websites that are offering jobs after completion of an online examination have popped up here in the U.S. and in the U.K.

The unfortunate part about these websites is that they look even more official, since they require the end user to pass through a "captcha" before getting to the exam. A "captcha" in case you aren't familiar with the term is a graphic that has squiqqly letters and numbers, supposedly that cannot be read by a machine, so that only a human could recognize them and you have to enter them correctly to proceed.

While these malware sites require passing through a "captcha", it turns out that you can enter anything in the field, and you get by the "captcha" and automatically start downloading malware, instead of actually getting to an online examination.

The key to protecting yourself here, is of course what we always say, and that's making sure you're browsing the web behind a secure web gateway or proxy, that's running up to date web filtering and anti-malware software. For those end-users that need to get protected and aren't on a corporate network, there's always the free software from Blue Coat also, K9, available at www.getk9.com