Trojan program poses as anti-spam screensaver

NewScientist.com news service ^ | 12/4/2004 | Will Knight

[bedolido]

A program that spies on keystrokes and mouse clicks to capture passwords and other personal information from computer users has begun circulating disguised as a screensaver purporting to attack spam-related websites.

This “Trojan horse” program is the latest twist in a controversial saga that began with the release of an anti-spam screensaver by Lycos Europe on 30 November. The www.makelovenotspam.com screensaver aimed to clog up the bandwidth of spam sites by barraging them with fake data.

Experts believe the new trojan program may have been developed in retaliation to the Lycos screensaver, perhaps to deter users from downloading the it in the first place. The program arrives in an email with the subject line "Be the first to fight spam with Lycos screen", and is compressed in an attachment entitled "Lycos screensaver to fight spam".

Upon installation, a program known as "Mdropper-IT" sends a message to an Indonesian email address to confirm its status. It then keeps a secret record of a user's keystrokes to gather bank account details, passwords and other valuable information

[dansangel]

Sometimes I fantasize how wonderful the world would be if the people that designed these viruses would put their talents to good use.

But then I just slap some cold water on my face and hunker down for life in the real world.

[backhoe]

It's a shameful waste, isn't it? I read somewhere that these characters pull in something like $70,000 a month with this garbage.

[Iris7]

Can be fixed, but will require big changes in how things are done. To control phishing individual users will need hardware internet interfaces, like a VPN router, and authenticate through a trusted server, say the Bank's server. Internet commerce passing credit card numbers or stuff like that will cease otherwise.

Malware is a different problem, requiring different answers. The guys are talking about checking continuously for corrupted files and improper executions. Don't believe this can be done very well. A real security system is needed, a sort of Counterpane affair.

The internet is simply not secure and cannot be made so. Can be improved. The biggest problem is users trusting Microsoft and Symantec to protect them. The system is inherently complex and cares about you just as much as your toaster does.