__/ [ suckmysav ] on Wednesday 21 February 2007 22:48 \__
> TeeVee news is all aghast in Australia today over a new "virus" (read:
> trojan) that is targeting Aussie "computers" (read: Windows PC's).
>
> The truth is that this is a trojan delivered through a good old fashioned
> social engineering email with titles such as;
>
> "Current Australia's Prime Minister survived a hear attack"[sic]
> "The life of the Prime Minister is in grave danger"
> "Prime Minister survived a heard attack"[sic]
>
> According to Trend Micro, the risk conditions are;
> "Windows 98, ME, XP, 2K3 and an internet connection"
>
> I would add to that "clueless idiot user" except for that
> describes the majority of Windows users so it would of
> course be redundant.
>
> Of course the main media makes no mention of the fact it
> is a Windows only "virus" it just "attacks computers".
>
> From what I can gather, the trojan is not delivered within
> the email but via a website which address is provided within
> the text of the email. It would appear that simply visiting
> the website is enough to infect your Windoze computer.
>
> Once you are infected you can look forward to all your
> keystrokes being logged and potentially seeing the contents
> of your bank account being liberated.
>
>
http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=TROJ_SMALL.GHI
>
> Despite the glaringly bad english that is worthy of a 419
> scammer, the "Computer Expert" they interviewed earnestly
> described the scam as being "very well executed".
>
> Sigh. If a truly well executed scam ever arrives then
> Windows Land is truly fucked.
When I posted this a couple of days ago I tried to make it clear that such
attacks rely on brute-force mailing, which in itself relies on the
insecurity of Windows. There are 100-150 million hijacked Windows machines
out there and their SPAMming capacity is that which can clog up the Web and
knock down mail servers (this happened when major SPAMmers did a test run at
the end of last year). There's a cycle of abuse here.
--
~~ With compliments
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Free the mind, the source will follow"
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT GNU/Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
run-level 5 Jan 23 00:41 last=S
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