French embassy surrenders to hackers

Experts are warning users to avoid a French embassy website after a page was found to be exposing users to malware.

The attack took place on the Libyan version of the embassy site. The malicious code is hidden within the page and cannot be seen upon entering the site.

Researchers from McAfee said that the malicious code is embedded in the page as an iframe tag. The tag allows the page to launch another page as an invisible one pixel by one pixel box.

The iframe box connects to a site in Hong Kong, which uses embedded iframes of its own to redirect to another site in the Ukraine. That site then attempts to run a browser exploit and install malware on the user's computer.

"Once again, we can see how people involved in such attacks use dedicated malicious websites in various countries to make it difficult to defeat them," researcher Francois Paget wrote on a company blog.

"It is especially difficult when an ISP accepts to host websites without verifying the lesser data the criminals enters when they register."

McAfee thinks that the attacks might be an effort to exploit public interest of Libyan dictator Moamer Khadafi's upcoming visit to France. The researchers compared the attacks to last summer's 'Italian Job' attacks in which travel and recreation sites were used to push malware on unsuspecting users.