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After laying low for the better part of a year, the Warezov botnet is back - with some new tricks up its sleeve.

In the past week, trojan horse programs that install the Warezov bot have been spotted on websites offering free MP3 downloads, according to Joe Stewart, director of malware research at security provider SecureWorks. The attacks are a big change for Warezov, which burst on the scene in 2006 with malware attacks spread in email attachments. The new methodology is an acknowledgment of the futility of email attacks given the difficulty of sneaking malicious payloads past today's email filters.

Stewart says Warezov is more of a payload delivery system than an actual bot. It is in essence a backdoor that installs any software its operator wants. In recent times, the payload of choice is a fast-flux hosting platform that turns compromised PCs into servers that host spoof sites used in phishing campaigns. Fast-flux networks are much harder to shut down because there's no central channel to defeat. If a single node hosting, say, a fraudulent Bank of America website is taken down, there are still thousands of other infected machines ready to take its place.

In the case of Warezov, the malware installs two separate components: a reverse HTTP proxy that serves content from an obscured master server and a DNS server that has been modified from ISC BIND. The DNS server acts as a slave that gets zone updates from the master.

The sudden burst of activity from Warezov comes after more than nine months inactivity that began about the time that prolific spammer Alan Ralsky was indicted in a 41-page federal indictment. It's unclear if Ralsky had ties to Warezov or not.

Full article here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10...second_coming/