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#1 |
Bibliophagist
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Malware and pirated ebooks
Interesting item in The Hacker News on pirated ebooks now being used by ViperSoftX malware for attacks. There have been proof of concept ebooks with malware for years but looks like they have finally been weaponized though this is more due to using .rar archives to store them.
See ViperSoftX Malware Disguises as eBooks on Torrents to Spread Stealthy Attacks for more information. |
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#2 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Seems to me that the ebooks themselves don't contain malware, the archives do. Why should anyone want to run an unknown executable from a random rar archive when they actually wanted an ebook is beyond me, but people are capable of doing some very stupid things.
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#3 |
Well trained by Cats
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Many (Many) years ago, I had a case where Norton AV, checking my email, actually caused the deployment of a virus in an archive attachment.
(They fixed that flaw within hours) The actual e-mail was SPAM, that I did not even open and sent to the bit bucket.. But the damage was already done. |
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#4 | |
the rook, bossing Never.
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Quote:
I think it must be a slow aday for Hacker News. |
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#5 |
Grand Sorcerer
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#6 | |
Resident Curmudgeon
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Quote:
OK. CLICK |
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#7 |
Addict
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Do RAR's even offer much compression on an EPUB? The other day I was trying to send my wife some EPUBs over email and tried zipping them to get them under the 25mb attachment limit, but the ZIP file barely shaved more than a meg or two off the filesize versus just sending the EPUBs individually. 7-zip wasn't much better, and I couldn't guarantee that she had 7-zip installed on her PC. I ended up just sending her two emails.
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#8 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Hardly matters on Windows these days. Defender is flagging/deleting just about every downloaded archive that contains executables as a severe threat (including executables that Defender doesn't flag when downloaded uncompressed). Quite annoying actually. You don't want to tell Defender to stop scanning ALL downloaded archives, but ... sheesh! Not everything out there is Wacatac.B!ml. Dial it down a notch Microsoft!
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#9 |
Grand Sorcerer
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An EPUB is a zip file. Zipping a zip is never going to give significant further compression. In some cases the file will get larger. Using a different general purpose compression algorithm on an already well compressed file will be unlikely to result in significant further compression.
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#10 | |||
Custom User Title
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A few years ago there was a "WinRAR" vulnerability - except it wasn't actually WinRAR, it was a vulnerability in unacev2.dll and would affect any archive program using that specific library. Last edited by ownedbycats; 07-29-2024 at 06:00 PM. |
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#11 | ||
Groupie
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I don't think that it's about rar files at all. If I read this right, there's a shortcut that looks like a book file (kamasutra.epub.exe), that then installs this trojan. Quote:
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#12 |
Grand Sorcerer
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How does kamasutra.epub.exe look like a book file? Surely even the most novice potential book thief knows that ebooks aren't executables.
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#13 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Remember that by default Windows does not display file type.... So after expanding the archive they will see kamasutra.epub in the folder....
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#14 | |
Well trained by Cats
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Quote:
If that (no ext)is set, then RED flag if there is one showing ![]() LOGIC I get security emails from my bank (and ISP) Frequently. The Flag??? They come in on the WRONG email account. Many ISP allow alias/additional mailboxes as part of your subscription. Hint: The bank never uses my theducks account ![]() |
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#15 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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Quote:
There's certainly vectors in ebooks themselves that can be exploited, but this doesn't seem like one of them. Any reading engine that allows epubs to access/modify files outside of the ebook's own archive (without the user giving explicit permission for them to do so via default preferences modification) is a shoddy reading engine. Last edited by DiapDealer; 07-29-2024 at 08:37 PM. |
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