ZeroAccess: 9 million infected, are you one of them?

    As I mentioned in my previous post, ZeroAccess is still around and is adapting. Over 9 million PCs are now infected with this bot. Most are located in the USA or Western Europe. 33% of super nodes are located in Germany, with the US coming in a close second with 32%. A super node is an infected machine that is not behind a system like NAT so that other bots, or peers, can access it. This post will be mainly directed at how to tell if you are infected, and who is at the most risk of infection.

    ZeroAccess uses multiple install locations, so you should check all of them. The main component drops at two locations, 1 in appdata, the other in windows/installer. if one is deleted, the other is still perfectly capable of functioning. The two locations are shown in figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1
Thanks to SophosLabs

 Both contain a dll file, named "n" (the main component), which are added to startup by hijacking a COM directive. These also contain a file named "@" which is a list of predetermined peers for the bot to connect to and retrieve updates, commands, etc. These folders also have 2 directories named "U" and "L" which contain plugins and temp files.


Also, if you have windows vista or up, ZeroAccess will try to patch services.exe fortunately, it is easy to restore by running the following command:

sfc.exe /scanfile=c:\windows\system32\services.exe

Simply check for these signs to see if you are infected. If you have been browsing the web without appying recent updates to internet explorer, adobe flash, or java, scan and fix, and apply all updates.
My next post will explain in detail how to remove and protect from this virus.

Credits:
SophosLabs

PlugX or Korplug

     Some of you may have heard about a campaign using Poison Ivy to target users in Japan, China, and Taiwan. The same group is now developing a new RAT (Remote Administration Tool) called PlugX or Korplug. They seem to be distributing both side by side and are using some of the same servers to control both. This Trojan is detected as "Backdoor.Win32.Plugx". The Trojan is being deployed in attachments to spam mail (examples provided here). Some variants of this virus may be signed with stolen certificates.

    How to remove:
    Most Antivirus programs (such as Norton and Nod32) detect and remove this Trojan, so running a scan with any of these should get rid of the problem. However, it is possible to manually remove this trojan by following these steps (provided by 2-spyware)

1. Delete registry values: 
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\FAST
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_SXS
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SxS
2. Delete files: 
1. %UserProfile%\SxS\bug.log 
2. %UserProfile%\SxS\rc.exe 
3. %UserProfile%\SxS\rc.hlp 
4. %UserProfile%\SxS\rcdll.dll

Sorry for this short post, more information on this threat will be posted later. Be sure to check the sources for more information and continued reading.

Remember to comment with a topic for my next post.



Sources:
TrendMicro
Symantec