Hackers Hit BusinessWeek With Malware

BusinessWeek.com, which just last week publicly launched Business Exchange, a kind of social network for readers and industry leaders, has been hit by a SQL injection (define) attack.

Security software vendor Sophos discovered the vulnerability and notified BusinessWeek.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, wrote on his blog that hackers tried to infect readership that used part of the site with malware.

"Hundreds of pages on a part of BusinessWeek’s website which offers information about where MBA students might find future employers have been struck by the SQL Injection attack - where a security vulnerability is exploited in order to insert malicious code into the site's underlying database," the post said. Gluley told InternetNews.com that hackers are focusing on SQL injection attacks because "they want to take over your desktop, and companies are protecting their e-mail now, so the other way to get to your desktop is through the browser."

SQL injection attacks, the most common form of hacker attacks, exploit vulnerabilities on a Website to insert malicious code into the database behind the Website. In BusinessWeek's case, that code would lead users to a Russian Web site from which malware could be downloaded.

For its part, BusinessWeek.com was tight-lipped about its response, saying only that the malicious application was removed.

"Online security is a top priority and, while we continue to investigate the matter, we are confident that our readers' personal information has not been compromised," BusinessWeek spokesperson Patti Straus said in an e-mailed response to requests for comment. She said the attack affected only one application within a specific sector of the Web site.

"We continue to work to ensure the integrity of our site and to protect it from future illegal and malicious hacking activity," Strauss added.

Getting rid of the link is not enough, Cluley said. "It's easy to remove the malicious links, but BusinessWeek has to look at their infrastructure and work out how the attackers managed to hack their code or the chances are that, within a number of hours, the site will get reinfected."

Google Safe Browsing's diagnostic page for BusinessWeek.com showed that 214 of the 2,157 pages tested on the site downloaded and installed malware on the visitor's desktop without the user's consent. However, the problem seems to have been resolved, as Google Safe Browsing's page said the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on September 11.

Google's Safe Browsing extension is built into the Google Toolbar and integrated into Mozilla Firefox 2.0. It validates URLs against a frequently updated list of known phishing URLs.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.