by Suzi Turner, ZDNet

HOSTS file hijacking combined with bank password stealing trojans is one of the more egregious spyware tricks currently being seen. Here's the scenario. A user is infected with a trojan and other malware that, among other things, changes the HOSTS file so that websites commonly used for online banking are redirected to the spyware pusher/thief's site which is made to look nearly identical to the real bank site.

HOSTS file hijacking can be prevented with a number of apps including several anti-spyware programs and utilities.

SunbeltBLOG has an excellent write up describing this trick as well as a video for demonstration. Host file hijacking is not new on the spyware scene and has been used by CoolWebSearch and similar groups to redirect users' browsers to alternative search sites or adware/spyware sites. In many cases the IP address or domain being used to collect users' IDs and passwords is located outside of the US, but in Sunbelt's write up, the IP address is in River City and belongs to an ISP with headquarters in Dallas, Texas, Layered Technology.

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By David Talbot

"The Net's basic flaws cost firms billions, impede innovation, and threaten national security. It's time for a clean-slate approach, says MIT's David D. Clark."

"In his office within the gleaming-stainless-steel and orange-brick jumble of MIT's Stata Center, Internet elder statesman and onetime chief protocol architect, David D. Clark, prints out an old PowerPoint talk.

"Dated July 1992, it ranges over technical issues like domain naming and scalability.

"But in one slide, Clark points to the Internet's dark side: its lack of built-in security. In others, he observes that sometimes the worst disasters are caused not by sudden events but by slow, incremental processes -- and that humans are good at ignoring problems.

"'Things get worse slowly. People adjust,' Clark noted in his presentation. 'The problem is assigning the correct degree of fear to distant elephants.'

[Click here to view graphic representations of David D. Clark’s four goals for a new Internet architecture.]

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