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Lycos Anti-Spam Screensaver Inspires Trojan

Posted by timothy on from the this-gets-confusing dept.

Even though it's been withdrawn, the Lycos anti-spam screensaver is not forgotten. Rollie Hawk writes "And with this, the 'What's Good for the Goose...' award goes to all those people trying to install that notorious spam-attacking Lycos screen saver but ended up with a Trojan horse instead. This trojan is spreading via email with the subject line 'Be the first to fight spam with Lycos screen saver,' tucked in an innocent-looking file called 'Lycos screensaver to fight spam.zip.' According to F-Secure, this trojan contains keylogger elements but little more has been specified. The only question I have is how long until the 'I promise to clean that trojan disguised as a DDoSing Lycos screen saver.exe' virus gets released."

3 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Re:tojans... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Of course the enormous joke here is
    http://info.lycos.com/pressroom/100604_press.a sp

    and you just go check a mail server log who administrates the netblocks that pump the most spam ...

    uhh... that's right, daum / kornet

  2. Semantics by Meostro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Will everyone please use the proper terms for these objects? "Misnaming Viruses" would've been my choice for the peeve poll:

    A virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents.

    A Trojan is a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software.

    A computer worm is self-replicating, but is self-contained and does not need to be part of another program to propagate itself.

    So most of the so-called viruses that are out there are really Trojans - they claim to be one thing, but are actually something else. Once you delete the original(s), you're finished; they don't generally infect your other files to propagate, they just make several copies of themselves independent of your programs. Other than macro viruses, there are very few true viruses in the wild these days.

  3. Re:Obligatory File Extension Hiding Reminder by wx327 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, if you wanted to think one level deeper, a real file named youhavewon.txt would just appear as youhavewon, if file extension hiding is turned on.

    Not that the average user thinks that deep...