I found something very suspicious. When connecting to www.pulseexpress.com following a Google link, the server redirects you to some very dubious site that sends you a .exe file right away:
# host www.pulseexpress.com
www.pulseexpress.com has address 173.236.189.124
# netcat 173.236.189.124 80
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.pulseexpress.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/10.0.2 Iceweasel/10.0.2
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en-gb;q=0.8,en;q=0.6,de-de;q=0.4,de;q=0.2
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
DNT: 1
Connection: keep-alive
Referer:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pulseexpress.com%2F&ei=JfhkT_SuGYf40gG85MW_CA&usg=AFQjCNGlomNN7JWxEG7DUzbJyqnVFYkj7w&sig2=i5xsJPgIs1sbD6gpDzJ7OQ
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:53:40 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://www.fdvrerefrr.ezua.com/
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 20
Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html
However, if you enter the address right into your browser, content is served normally:
# netcat 173.236.189.124 80
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.pulseexpress.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/10.0.2 Iceweasel/10.0.2
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en-gb;q=0.8,en;q=0.6,de-de;q=0.4,de;q=0.2
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
DNT: 1
Connection: keep-alive
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:53:51 GMT
Server: Apache
P3P: CP="NOI ADM DEV PSAi COM NAV OUR OTRo STP IND DEM"
Expires: Mon, 1 Jan 2001 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0,
pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Set-Cookie: e7c55e1c7796b5e5c04e0c55afd862ea=e427sf2eh4t11jno5c4pvaal40;
path=/
Set-Cookie: virtuemart=e427sf2eh4t11jno5c4pvaal40
Set-Cookie: ja_purity_tpl=ja_purity; expires=Thu, 07-Mar-2013 20:53:53
GMT; path=/
Last-Modified: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:53:53 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 4428
Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
[...]
To me this looks like the server has been compromised. Also, the attack seems to have been non-trivial, as the Apache configuration must have been modified in such a way that only some requests are redirected - probably to make it less likely for the owner to notice the problem.
Do people agree with that analysis?
Is this conditional redirection technique something new and hand-crafted, or is this a routine procedure included in standard attack software suites?