The Forbes.com financial site was hacked with the use of a plugin by Chinese hackers. Two security firms are reporting that late last year the financial news site of Forbes.com was infected with a plugin that allowed hackers to gain personal information from financial service workers and defensive employees. A Thought Of The Day widget had malware installed and was able to collect information from any page on the website.
Invincea and iSight Partners reported this week that the widget exploited problems with the Microsoft IE browser or Adobe’s Flash software to gain information on visitors. This is the largest attack by a foreign government known to date. Most hacking is done by criminals looking for personal identity data. The Forbes.com website noticed an altered file on their server at the end of November and made changes to clean the server and prevent future attacks.
Microsoft fixed the vulnerability this week while Adobe patches their software in December.
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