NBC Confirms Hack of NBC.com

[Erica Absetz <eabsetz () opensecurityfoundation org>]

http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/nbc-confirms-hack-nbccom-a-5530

A blog posted on the website of NBC News says the network's main
entertainment website, NBC.com, was hacked on Feb. 21.

Wilson Rothman, technology and science editor at NBC News Digital, in
a blog reported that security researchers warned Web users against
visiting NBC.com, saying that hackers added links tomalware on the
site. Google's Chrome browser and others detected the threats and
deterred users from loading the pages.

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NBC released the following statement regarding the website, which
promotes the entertainment offerings of the TV network: "We've
identified the problem and are working to resolve it. No user
information has been compromised."

Ronald Prins, co-founder of the Dutch IT security firm Fox IT, says in
a web posting that the NBC.com website links to the Redkit Exploit Kit
that is spreading Citadel malware that has been targeting American
financials institutions [seeCitadel Trojan Moves Beyond Banks].

"It has been shown before (with Dutch news site nu.nl, for example,
along with the recent incidents at the New York Times and Wall Street
Journal), targeting media and news websites can vastly improve an
attacker's chances of success," Prins writes. "Users presume these
large organizations websites to be free from malware. If an attacker
can gain access to these Web servers, they can use them to distribute
malware to every visitor of that Web server."

Prins said the hackers exploited an iframe - coding that allows the
embedding of another document with an HTML document - that then tries
to download and execute a malicious JAR and PDF files.

Another report, from the blogger HitmanPro, says the exploit was
discovered on several other websites, including one for the NBC
program Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Rothman says the breach has no effect on NBC News Digital, which
operates NBCNews.com, TODAY.com and other news-oriented sites.
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