Irish websites are being attacked by a series of sophisticated viruses, the website hosting company Digiweb warned today.
The company has advised customers, whom it believes have been attacked, that their website passwords have been compromised.
In an email sent to customers who have been attacked the company said, “As part of an ongoing investigation, we have established that many hosted websites have been tampered with by an external attacker or group of attackers using FTP, among other means.”
According to the company attackers are using viruses called ‘Gumblar‘ and ‘Martuz‘ to target website owners.
Digiweb says all major Irish and international hosting companies are suffering from this kind of attack which have been on the increase over the past year.
These viruses copy website usernames and passwords. They then uses this information to install a copy of itself into a website’s HTML files which it then uploads the files online. When uploaded to a website the virus is downloaded onto visitor’s computers.
Daragh McLoughlin, a director with hosting company LetsHost.ie, says these viruses can cause critical problems for website owners. “Because the virus writes itself into your website anyone visiting your site will also be attacked. If a search engine detects the virus in your code they may block users from accessing your site.”
Dan King, Hosting and Managed Services Manager with Digiweb says “These viruses have been actively sniffing hosting passwords for over a year and it has been very effective for them.”
He added “Every single hosting company we have spoken to has suffered from this problem. When their customers get infected the hosting provider must intervene to help.”
Mr McLoughlin agrees that these attacks have been increasing over the past year. However, he believes LetsHost’s security measures can block infected files being uploaded.
Digiweb believes the attackers used known security holes in Adobe’s Flash and Acrobat programmes. These Adobe products are frequently used to add rich media such as videos and PDF documents to websites.
Two weeks ago Adobe issued a series of security bulletins warning of critical vulnerabilities in some of its online products, including Flash.
Both Digiweb and LetsHost have advised website owners to conduct a complete virus scan on all computers used to transfer files online. Customers should also check their websites for unusual activity.