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Trojan Plaguing File Sharing Networks
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-05-07
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A massive outbreak of malware began hitting media swappers hundreds of thousands of times nearly a week ago.
 | | Trojan Plaguing File Sharing Networks |  |
The number of detections topped 500,000 for users of popular file sharing clients like eDonkey and Limewire, as a malicious Trojan sought a way in to machines via bogus MP3 files.
The outbreak began Friday, according to security vendor McAfee. Due to the nature of the Trojan arriving via fake MP3 and video files dumped onto file sharing networks, the company rated the Trojan a Medium threat.
"This is one of the most prevalent pieces of malware in the last three years," Craig Schmugar, threat researcher at McAfee Avert Labs, said in a statement. "We have never before had a threat this significant that arrives as a media file."
Once the Trojan, dubbed Downloader-UA.h by McAfee, finds a home on a PC, running it will trigger the download of additional components. These will pop ads up on the infected machine.
Schmugar further noted how the Trojan brings in a browser control that runs a purported music player. In reality, it loads a Flash-based player on a web page that plays a limited number of songs.
With one wave of malware flooding networks, it's not hard to imagine copycats making similar attacks. The real danger will come if some of the more sophisticated malware backers combine their operations with some kind of rapidly developed zero-day exploit.
That's a big threat since any security solution lacking the ability to pick up on the problem before having a signature file updated would pose little obstruction to that kind of attack. It's just one more reason giving security pros sleepless nights.
View All Articles by David Utter
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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