Poisoned PDF pill used to attack US military contractors-- Yet more cyber-espionage shenanigans

Unidentified hackers are running an ongoing cyber-espionage attack targeting US military contractors

Booby-trapped PDF files, posing as messages from the US Department of Defense, were emailed to US defence contractors last week. The document refers to a real conference due to be held in Las Vegas in March.

Opening the malicious PDF file attached to the spoofed emails triggers an attempt to exploit an Adobe Reader vulnerability only patched by the software firm last Tuesday (12 January).

The infection of vulnerable systems opens up a backdoor that connects to a server hosted in Taiwan, though the hackers who set up the attack may potentially be located anywhere.

From CNET:

China-based Google attacks similar to prior ones

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The targeted attacks on Google and more than 30 other U.S. companies late last year bear striking similarities to targeted attacks on 100 U.S. companies last summer, a security researcher familiar with the attacks said Tuesday.

Last July, workers at about 100 U.S. technology companies were targeted with e-mails containing malicious PDF files that exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader. The attacks were detected early and there were no serious consequences, said Eli Jellenc, head of international cyberintelligence at VeriSign iDefense.

In mid-December, Google, Adobe Systems, and a host of other Silicon Valley companies were targeted by attacks originating in China, prompting Google on Tuesday to say that it will stop censoring its Chinese search results and to threaten to pull out of that market.

The code was similar to the previous attack and initially iDefense and other sources had said that the latest attacks were believed to involve malicious PDF files in e-mail attachments, but that has turned out to be unsubstantiated, Rick Howard of iDefense said.

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