Tuesday, May 02, 2006
The New Trend in Malware...and this is only the beginning.
Source taken from I.T. Vibe
Trojan horse demands your money to save your data
We are starting to see A new Trojan horse that holds your data for ransom.
The Troj/Ransom-A Trojan horse displays a message threatening to delete one file belonging to the innocent user every 30 minutes, until the $10.99 ransom is paid. Once payment has been made the Trojan "promises" to remove
itself and restore access to the stolen files.
Bizarrely the Trojan suggests victims contact him at a Yahoo email address if they have a problem uninstalling the Trojan once they have paid the ransom.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said
"This Trojan horse is designed to take your data hostage, and tries to scare users into paying up quickly by threatening to wipe files one-by-one. Our concern is that this may be the beginning of a growing trend of malware designed to extort money from innocent users. Ransomware like this underlines the importance for every computer user to make regular backups of their important data, and to defend their computers with up-to-date security software."
Like lots of spyware the Trojan horse tries to circumvent attempts to remove it from infected computers once it has activated.
If the affected user presses Ctrl-Alt-Del in an attempt to stop the Trojan horse running, a new message is displayed saying:
Yeah, We don't die, We multiply! Ctrl+Alt+Del isn't quite working today, is it? I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but Crtl+Alt+Del is everyone's S.O.S.
Trojan horse demands your money to save your data
We are starting to see A new Trojan horse that holds your data for ransom.
The Troj/Ransom-A Trojan horse displays a message threatening to delete one file belonging to the innocent user every 30 minutes, until the $10.99 ransom is paid. Once payment has been made the Trojan "promises" to remove
itself and restore access to the stolen files.
Bizarrely the Trojan suggests victims contact him at a Yahoo email address if they have a problem uninstalling the Trojan once they have paid the ransom.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said
"This Trojan horse is designed to take your data hostage, and tries to scare users into paying up quickly by threatening to wipe files one-by-one. Our concern is that this may be the beginning of a growing trend of malware designed to extort money from innocent users. Ransomware like this underlines the importance for every computer user to make regular backups of their important data, and to defend their computers with up-to-date security software."
Like lots of spyware the Trojan horse tries to circumvent attempts to remove it from infected computers once it has activated.
If the affected user presses Ctrl-Alt-Del in an attempt to stop the Trojan horse running, a new message is displayed saying:
Yeah, We don't die, We multiply! Ctrl+Alt+Del isn't quite working today, is it? I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but Crtl+Alt+Del is everyone's S.O.S.
# posted by David Low @ 9:44 AM 
