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10K Aussie PCs Affected By Trojan
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-08-03
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The Australian Tax Office has already identified 178 cases where people who submitted tax returns online also had their personal information sent to identity thieves.
 | | 10K Aussie PCs Affected By Trojan |  |
A Trojan file has burrowed into 10,000 PCs in Australia, as discovered by the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team, according to a Sydney Morning Herald report. AusCERT had been warning banks and other businesses about the problem, and estimated as many as 10,000 cases of infection exist.
The problem stems from the Haxdoor trojan, derived from a Russian programmer's malware creation called A311 Death. It has acted to capture keystrokes, usernames and passwords, and the content of online forms such as those used by the Australian Tax Office.
Notification of the thefts has been sent to the 178 taxpayers whose tax file numbers have been confirmed as stolen. They will be offered new tax numbers as a result.
An AusCERT spokesperson said in the report that conventional anti-virus programs could not detect the Trojan. The malware focused on users of Australian bank websites. Users could pick up the Trojan unwittingly by email, without needing to open an attachment, or by visiting insecure websites.
Part of the problem stems from Windows users browsing the Web from the owner or administrator account. Doing so allowed the Trojan to infect a system when it encountered Haxdoor.
AusCERT recommended logging in under a user account with limited rights on the PC when doing things on the Internet. Without administrator-level access, a Trojan like Haxdoor cannot install itself as it can when all rights are available to the unsuspecting user.
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Tag: Online Security
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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