The Patterson Company

The Patterson Company has been a leader in masonry construction in Southern California for more than 30 years, their web page indicates, and they've now entered into the Malware Distribution Biz. 
:-)

OK... not likely.  However, they are now hosting malware that only 5 of 63 Web Security Solutions is protecting against:

How do we know that 20.exe is malicious?  Well... is it bad if the Registry is modified to enable proxies, new Certificate Authorities are created, and then, connections are made to a proxy in Russia?  Here are the details.

In summary, a dropper is currently being distributed that calls out via HTTP to grab this file.  Strongly recommend you check your logs for outbound TCP:80 connections sent that way.

Malicious Macro Lure

As noted previously, the malware authors know that we dare not block inbound Microsoft Office Files for fear of negatively impacting revenue generating processes.  To that end, a new attack is underway this morning with malicious macros embedded in a Microsoft Word attachment:

Why would the malware authors send this lure via email attachment... a technique leveraged in the early 2000s?  Because they know we trust our AV Vendors to detect malicious intentions.  Is that trust misplaced?  It would appear so based on the current poor detection rates of this attack:

Is it possible that McAfee & Symantec (not to mention the 52 other companies who missed this) are correct?  Is it possible that the Websense APX Solutions we use at ESPO generated a false positive?  Check out this report to see for yourself.  I suspect the fact that files were dropped on the hard drive, registry entries were re-written, and, a call outbound via HTTP to retrieve an exe will convince you that trust put in AV Companies is trust misplaced.