Malicious
hackers are using booby-trapped Flash banner ads (thanks iceb) to hijack clipboards for
use in rogue security software attacks. In the Web attacks, which target Mac,
Windows and Linux users running Firefox, IE and Safari, hackers are seizing
control of the machine's clipboard and using a hard-to-delete URL that points to
a fake anti-virus program. According to victims on several Web forums, the
attack is coming from Adobe Flash-based advertising on legitimate sites -
including Newsweek, Digg and MSNBC.com. Security researcher Aviv Raff has
created
a proof-of-concept demo to show how easy it is to use Flash with
ActionScript code to load (persistently) a malicious URL into a target
clipboard. (BEWARE: If you click on the demo link, your clipboard is
automatically hijacked and will only be released if the browser window is
closed).