Virus hunters combing through the wreckage of the zero-day WMF (Windows Metafile) attacks have found evidence that exploit code was being peddled by Russian hacker groups for $4,000 a pop.
The first sign of an exploit was traced back to the middle of December 2005, a full two weeks before anti-virus vendors started noticing mysterious WMF files rigged with malicious executable code, says Alexander Gostev, a senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab.
"One very important aspect of this case is that the vulnerability was first identified by members of the computer underground," Gostev said.
"Around the middle of December, this exploit could be bought from a number of specialized sites. [Two or three] hacker groups from Russia were selling this exploit for $4,000," he added, confirming a widely held suspicion that a lucrative market exists for code that can exploit unpatched Windows
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Thursday, February 02, 2006
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