Java vulnerabilities have always been popular among cybercriminals (exploit kits authors) since they can work across multiple browsers and even multiple operating systems, the potential for infecting large numbers of users is very high.

On April 16, Oracle released its Java Critical Patch Update (CPU) for April 2013 that addressed vulnerabilities found in numerous supported products. Interestingly, one of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2013-2423, was publicly disclosed the following day and this was closely followed by a Metasploit proof of concept on April 20.

It didn’t take long for exploit kit authors to adopt this openly available vulnerability. We are currently seeing cases of Cool EK using this new Java vulnerability and we expect this exploit to be rolled out to other exploit kits.

The...

In the first quarter of 2013, we spotted quite a few zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Oracle Java, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, and Microsoft Internet Explorer being exploited in the wild. This blog discusses the details of these zero-days exploited to spread malware in the first quarter of 2013.
 

Java zero-day vulnerabilities

During the month of January 2013, we saw some interesting Oracle Java SE zero-day issues being actively exploited in the wild. On January 13, 2013, Oracle released a security alert for Oracle Java Runtime Environment Multiple Remote Code Execution Vulnerabilities (CVE-2013-...

We have blogged before about mobile spam messages, and while email spam declined in the past year to around 66%, mobile spam—although not yet that prevalent—is now gaining ground.

Currently the “winning ticket” theme is making its rounds through central Europe. Eight friends of mine received it over the space of a few days and I am proud that none of them fell for it, even though some were sorely tempted. The message states that you have won two million pounds sterling with some numbers that you never selected, in a non-specified lottery that you have certainly never played. There are a lot of variations of this particular scam that we have observed over the years, with a range of different prizes including cars and holidays. Unfortunately, there is no money behind it—at least not for you—as of course if you never play the lottery, you will definitely...

Contributor: Christopher Mendes

On the afternoon of April 15, 2013, just when many people were on the cusp of conquering another personal milestone by completing the Boston Marathon, they were hit hard by an act of cowardice. Two bombs struck near the finish line of the Marathon on Monday. Within hours of the bomb blast, large malware-laden spam emails started doing the rounds.

Symantec customers are protected from this attack. Symantec blocks the attack by multi-level detection using Antispam, Intrusion Prevention System technology (IPS), and antivirus (AV). The AV detects the downloaded file as Packed.Generic.402. IPS detects the attack as Web Attack: Red Exploit Kit Website.

The spam email is very simple. The...