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Ah, first we had the ransomeware, yesterday the trojan targetting WoW users, now we have the World Cup trojan..
It really must be Trojan season.
A Trojan horse that poses as a World Cup wallchart has begun circulating on the net. The Haxdoor-IN Trojan horse is been spamvertised in messages, written in German, that purport a program that will allow fans to keep tab on football teams participating in next month’s eagerly anticipated tournament.
Windows users who follow links in these messages and download the software will wind up with infected PCs. Net security firm Sophos says all the spam emails promoting downloads of the malware it has seen so far have been written in German. “There is no reason to believe that hackers will not switch to using other languages to increase their pool of potential victims,” it warns.
It has happened in similar ways before.
Virus writers have regularly taken advantage of World Cup competitions to promote their wares. A year ago, the Sober-N worm offered tickets to the tournament in an attempt to trap gullible users into opening an infectious email attachment. In 2002, the Chick-F virus tried to exploit fans’ desires to learn the latest scores from games in South Korea and Japan.
At the end of the day it all comes down to Social Engineering, hacking the wetware, always the weakest link..They may have firewalls, antivirus and anti-spyware software up the chute, but if you can make them run an executable their PC is yours. Especially on Windows where the concept of privelege segregation is extremely vague..
Theres a bit more info about the trojan over at Sophos: Haxdoor-IN.
Its aliases are:
- Backdoor.Win32.Haxdoor.in
- BKDR_HAXDOOR.GM
- Backdoor.Haxdoor.J
Source: The Register
Pedro Pinheiro says
One of the many simple rules of not having your wetware hacked is believing that “There’s no such thing as free lunch”. It only covers a small part of the possible exploits, but an important one.
Darknet says
Pedro: Unfortunately what we see as common sense, doesn’t seem to be very common! That is indeed something I always tell people…If it’s too good to be true…IT ISN’T TRUE! They still don’t seem to get it though, human greed is overwhelming.
mozzy says
“They may have firewalls, antivirus and anti-spyware software up the chute, but if you can make them run an executable their PC is yours.”
In general I would agree…if I wouldn’t have had the sweetest security software I have ever seen installed. Zone Alarm 6.1
Until now I was extremely surprised, this little lovely program puts me in control. No network activity without my permission. Until now it cought any in/out bound activity that I have not reviewed before.
However I totally agree with you and Pedro: PEBKAC
If this wouldn’t be true, phishing shouldn’t work at all ;)