It is interesting, I read the whole report, and this is not the first timeit happens. Apparently, a "Trojan Horse" is not really a virus, but it makes the computer do some things, like send your info to that web site.
Here is the text of the article, it really affects those with AOL.
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PICTURE.EXE FIRST SURFACED right before Christmas, when some Net users were spammed with e-mail with the subject line “batty.” Several postings to Usenet virus groups followed; then Network Associates engineeers received several e-mail alerts to what appeared to be technically not a virus but a Trojan horse. (A Trojan horse does not replicate on its own, but a virus does.)
Network Associates has since updated its McAfee virus program to detect picture.exe (If you already have the software, an updated version can be downloaded from beta.nai.com ), but many questions remain about the prying program.
“This is a more interesting Trojan than normal,” said Vincent Gullotto, manager of the antivirus emergency response team for Network Associates. “It actually has the capability to take information and send it someplace. This one goes further than most and if it's successful can use the information against you.”
Network Associates received an unusually large number of e-mails from victims of picture.exe, and there are already dozens of Usenet posts with security experts warning about the danger.
Here's how it works:
Once a recipient opens picture.exe, that file expands into two other executables — note.exe and manager.exe — and places them into the Windows subdirectory. The following line is also added to the win.ini file: “run=note.exe.” That makes note.exe run the next time Windows is started.
According to Network Associates, note.exe then gathers information, apparently looking through the temporary Internet cache directory in an attempt to determine what Web sites users have visited. It then encrypts that information into a DAT file. It also appear to look in the directory where AOL user information is stored.
Note.exe then builds a second DAT file.
“It's unclear right now what the second DAT file is for,” Gulotto said.
Usenet poster David Crick, a British computer science student who received the e-mail Dec. 23 and started the Usenet discussions, said, “I thought when I started downloading a very large e-mail: ‘Either someone's sent me an interesting piece of software, or it's a virus.' It turned out to be a combination of the two — an interesting virus,” he said.
Crick says the file employs a crude encryption technique, a 5-digit ASCII character shift — where a=f, b=g, and so on. Other Usenet posters say the DAT file is full of e-mail addresses.
After note.exe does its thing, manager.exe runs, attempting to e-mail the encrypted file to a e-mail addresses with the domain of a Chinese ISP. The recipient, of course, could be anywhere.
“It appears to try to gain access to an ISP,” Gulloto said. Several Usenet posts say that upon reboot, the Trojan horse opens up dial-up networking and tries to dial out of the infected PC.
There are many unanswered questions — chief among them, why China? Gulotto said last year his firm worked on a similar Trojan horse/virus with the same M/O. Called SemiSoft, it also gathers information and tries to send it to an e-mail address hosted in China. Network Associates is continuing to study picture.exe.
America Online was not available for comment. |
