Hackers Hit MySpace Page of Alicia Keys, Other Musicians

No one, it seems, is safe from hackers in cyberspace. This time round, it was not the FBI or one of the governmental security organizations who had to worry about hackers infecting their websites. Instead, hackers targeted the MySpace pages of a number of prominent musicians. One of the targets was the personal page of R&B singer Alicia Keys.

A report in the New York Times said the hackers attacked the pages of the musicians as part of a concerted social engineering offensive that would compromise the security of the computers of users accessing these pages, leaving them vulnerable to further attacks in the future. There are no details yet about the way in which the MySpace pages were attacked.

Experts have issued a warning that visiting these pages currently would be a high-risk proposition for users. The attacks on Key’s page as well as those of Greements of Fortune, a German funk band include Trojan horses that have been masked as codecs for new videos.

This is how the Trojans work: when a user accesses a compromised page, the exploit attempts to install malicious software, also called malware, on the user’s computer. If the user has security settings in place to block the malware, the exploit next tries to install a fake codec that would apparently enable the user to check out a video posted on the compromised page.

The report in the New York Times further said once the malware or fake codec is installed on a user’s computer, it alters the DNS settings of the computer. This ensures future search operations are directed to unauthorized sites, such as sites that sell fake security software and also pornographic sites. The redirect enables the hacker to effectively control future downloads the user may want to attempt, and also the content users view on their browser.

When a user clicks at any point on the compromised MySpace pages, they are directed to co8vd.cn/s, a Chinese malware site. The attacks were detected by users using LinkScanner software of Exploit Prevention Labs. This software blocks web pages that contain malicious code.

Even users who have installed security systems on their computers to ward off such attacks are not totally invulnerable, according to Roger Thompson, CTO at LinkScanner.com. On his blog, Thompson wrote that the hackers were using an exploit to perform background installations of malicious software.

The fact that the pages hacked were rich in media content made it all the more probable that a large number of user computers could be infected, he further wrote. When people visit such pages, they come with the expectation of being able to download a video, and they could be forgiven for assuming an installation was required to be able to download the video, something the hackers have taken full advantage of.

Thompson also wrote such attacks on popular social networking sites like MySpace, and any other similar open platform, could not be discounted as unusual. Security and functionality have an inversely proportional relationship, according to Thompson and the more the functionality, the more the chances of the security being compromised.

MySpace, on its part, issued a statement that it would take suitable steps to ward off any such attacks in future. A spokesman for the social networking website said the company had blocked and thrown out the source of the attempted hackings.