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Hijackers' computers transmit pornographyInternet users become unknowing victims
By John Schwartz, New York Times
More than a thousand unsuspecting Internet users around the world have recently had their computers hijacked by hackers, who are using them as pornographic Web sites.
The hijacked computers, which are chosen by the hackers apparently because they are linked by high-speed connections to the Internet, are secretly loaded with a software program that makes them transmit explicit Web pages advertising pornographic sites and offers to sign visitors up as customers, according to computer security experts.

Unless the owner of the hijacked computer is technologically sophisticated, the activity is likely to go unnoticed. The program, which only downloads the pornographic material briefly to the usurped computer to allow visitors to view it, is invisible to the computer's owner. It apparently does not harm the computer or interfere with its normal operation.

The hackers operating the ring direct traffic to each hijacked computer in their network for only a few minutes at a time, quickly rotating through a large number.

Some of the computers also are used to send spam e-mail messages to drum up traffic to the sites.

"Here people are sort of involved in the porno business and don't even know it," said Richard M. Smith, an independent computer researcher who first noticed the problem earlier this month.

Smith said he believed the ring can be traced back to Russian senders of spam, or unwanted commercial e-mail.

By hiding behind a ring of machines, the senders can cloak their identity while helping to solve one of the biggest problems for purveyors of pornography and spam: getting shut down by Internet service providers who receive complaints about the raunchy material.

The web of front machines hides the identity of the true server computer, so "there's no individual computer to shut down," Smith said. "We're dealing with somebody here who is very clever."

By monitoring Web traffic to the porn advertisements, Smith has counted more than a thousand machines that have been affected.

The creators of the ring, whose identities are unknown, are collecting money from the pornographic sites for signing up new customers. Many companies play this role in Internet commerce, getting referral fees for driving customers to sites with which they have no other connection.

The ring system could also be used by the hackers to skim off the credit card numbers of the people signing up, said Joe Stewart, senior intrusion analyst with Lurhq Corp. in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

The current version of the ring is not completely anonymous, however, since the hijacked machines download the pornographic ads from a single Web server. That machine is apparently owned by Everyones Internet, a large independent Internet service company in Houston that also offers Web hosting services, according to the computer investigators.

Jeff Lowenberg, the company's vice president of operations, said that he was not aware of any illegal activity on his company's computers but said that he would investigate.

Stewart said the ring was most likely a work in progress, and that weak links like being tied to a single server will be eliminated over time. "It could be improved on to make it harder to trace, and I think that may be coming in the future," he said.

Stewart said that the ring is troubling not just because of what it is being used for now but also because of what it might be used for next.

"This system is especially worrisome because they have an end-to-end anonymous system for spamming and running scams," he said. "It's not a far stretch to say that people who are running kiddie porn sites could say, 'Hey this is something we could use."'

The computer ring is the latest in an evolution of attacks that allow creators of spam and illicit computer schemes to use other people's computers as their accomplices. For several years, senders of spam have relied upon a vestigial element of the Internet mail infrastructure known as "open relay" to use Internet servers as conduits for their spam.

As network administrators have gradually shut down the open relay networks, spam senders have used the so-called "sobig" computer virus to plant similar capabilities on home and business PC machines. Recent waves of spam have been sent through those hijacked machines.

But this appears to be the first viral infection that causes target computers to display whole Web sites, Smith, the researcher, said.

A Justice Department official said that the computer ring, as described to him, could be a violation of at least two provisions of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The ring has also been used to run a version of a scheme for collecting credit card information from unwary consumers that has been called the "PayPal scam," Smith said. The hijacked computers send e-mail messages that purport to come from PayPal, an online payment service owned by eBay, asking recipients to fill out a Web site form with account information.

It is unclear precisely how the program, which depends on computers hooked up to high-capacity, high-speed Internet connections, gets into people's computers.

Smith said that he believed that the delivery vehicle was a variant of the "sobig" virus, which is capable of installing software on target computers. But Stewart, the computer security expert at Lurhq, said he had seen no evidence that the "sobig" virus was the culprit, and is looking at other mechanisms for delivery.

Stewart said that because a large number of infected computers gained access to the Internetthrough America Online, he suspected that the hackers might be embedding their programs through popular software like AOL Instant Messenger.

Neither Smith nor Stewart has found a simple way to tell whether a computer is infected. Technically, the rogue program is a reverse proxy server, which turns a computer into a conduit for content from a server while making it appear to be that server. Smith said when word of the program gets out, anti-virus companies are likely to offer quick updates to their products to find and disable the invasive software.

Computer owners can protect themselves by using firewall software or hardware, which prevent unauthorized entry and use of computers, Smith said. The program does not affect the Apple Macintosh line of computers or computers running variants of the Unix operating system.

Stewart, who has written a technical paper to help anti-virus companies devise defenses against the porn-hijacking network, has named the program "migmaf," for "migrant Mafia," because he believes the program originated in the Russian high-tech underworld.

Hackers from the former Soviet Union have been linked to a number of schemes, including extortion attempts in which they threaten to shut down online casinos through Internet attacks unless the companies pay them off. Anti-spam activists have also accused Russian organized crime organizations of taking over home and business PC's to create networks for sending spam. "They always seem to lead back to the Russian mob," Stewart said.

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