Security Incidents mailing list archives

Re: Unknown Hosts file


From: ePAc <epac () korigan net>
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 17:32:27 -0800 (PST)

Setting hosts to bogus/erroneous address is one way that anti add/popup
work. Some of these, when installed, also install a integration plugin to
allow a user to select an add and instruct the program to effectively
"blackhole" the given website. Does that user have such a program
installed ? (as a side note, most of those will leave their "custom host
file" in there, even after uninstall...)

---
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiantly talented fool...
  oo
,(..)\
  ~~

On 2 Apr 2002, David Tan wrote:



I have a client machine running Windows 2000
Professional.  All of a sudden, one day, the user was
unable to access several of the most popular
websites (i.e. google, yahoo, cnn, etc.).  I noticed that
the machine was attempting to access the wrong IP
address for all the websites, in fact, it was attempting
to access the SAME IP address for every website in
the group.  After some research, I found there was a
Hosts file with all the domains in question listed, and
the erroneous IP address.  Has anyone ever come
accross an incident where a virus or trojan would
place a Hosts file onto a system.  I have thoroughly
scanned the machine for viruses, open ports, etc.
and found nothing.  Is there anything else I should be
on the lookout for?

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