Was just going through the daily news scene when I just got stuck over the article published over pcworld. It seems the Web site for Indian antivirus vendor AvSoft Technologies has been hacked and is being used to install malicious software on visitors’ computers.

Hacking technique used , is not new !!

Seems like the technique or the way used to hack the site is not new. In the past also many websites have been hacked and used to install such kind of malicious codes. Here is what was done

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.

The malicious software is a variant of the Virut virus family.

Quoting more from the article :

The iFrame pages are commonly used by Web developers to insert content into their Web pages, but because it is possible to create an invisible iFrame window, the technology is often misused by hackers as a way to silently redirect victims to malicious Web sites.

AvSoft, based in New Delhi, sells an antivirus product called SmartCOP and has sold a second antivirus product called Smartdog. The company, which is not well-known in the U.S., also specializes in recovering data lost due to virus attacks. The company could not be reached for comment.

That data recovery service could come in handy for some, as Virut is known as a “parasitic infector” virus that is extremely difficult to remove. It infects all of your programs on your local hard drives, and then it starts hitting your network drives as well the first time you run.

Fortunately, the malware used to install Virut exploits only well-known bugs, meaning that users who are running antivirus software on fully patched systems will probably not be infected by the attack in its current state, security experts say.

Nobody is aware how the virus got inside the website as of now. The news is really shocking and do ring a bell about the highly insecure online world.

Moreover, it also give me an evil idea of marketing a product to create buzz all over the web world. Imagine, apple’s website getting hacked and publicizing Nokia or Sony. Similar way Microsoft’s website gets an advertisement of Linux !!! evil, isnt it ??… Well !! jokes apart, and I hope the webmasters find a solution to this frequent occurring problem and prevent such kind of incident in Future.

Remember the news about 16 year old kid hacking $84 million porn filter in just 30 mins ??