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A Merry Trojan Christmas
John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-12-22
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Every year, many people are lacking for clever gift ideas that everyone will find appealing, especially the person you're purchasing for. This year, a new gift has surfaced for email users everywhere. A new Trojan has arisen called MerryX.A and it uses the splendid holiday to sucker in people and infect their computer.
Panda Security discovered the stocking stuffer and said the infection starts with the subject "Merry Christmas!" and the text line: "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!" The email included a pair of attached files. One is an animated GIF called A_LIGHTSMC10.GIF, which shows the words "Merry Christmas" among bright lights and a self-extracting RAR file which contains two files - a copy of the trojan called SQLServer.exe and a Flash animation.
The MerryX.A Trojan records info about the computer including IP addresses, hardware data and other useful tidbits. It also tries to download other software from various websites. More Christmas presents one could suppose.
"MerryX.A is another example of malware taking advantage of the massive sending of Christmas cards during these dates," says Luis Corrons, head of PandaLabs. "However, its actions must in no way be overlooked, as, besides serving as an entry point for other threats, theft of data from the infected computer can lead to impersonation of the attacked person's identity, with terrible consequences."
This is not the first time that malware creators use Christmas to spread its creations. Zafi.D, a worm that caused an Amber Alert last Christmas, tried to pass itself off as a Christmas card in several languages, and Maldal.C, which, in the same fashion as MerryX.A, made use of a Santa Claus postcard in Christmas 2003.
"Users are advised to take precautions with emails received during these dates, and only open messages from reliable sources," warns Luis Corrons. "Unfortunately, this might not be the last Trojan of its kind that we see this Christmas, so it's better to stay alert against this kind of seasonal threat."
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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