Lycos Anti-Spam Screensaver Inspires Trojan

Even though it's been withdrawn, the Lycos anti-spam screensaver is not forgotten.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."

Comments

tojans...

[utopianfiat]

Well isn't that the basis of most trojans?
"I promise to clean your room, do your homework, give you neck rubs, check for typos, and build a perpetual motion machine!"
If they really wanted to, they could have tacked on a trojan that had absolutely nothing to do with the screensaver and call it that anyway.
I'm actually surprised the trojan doesn't DDoS Lycos.

Futility

[Lonesome Squash]

Every formal system has its Goedel sentence; every immune system has its HIV. It's the price of complexity.

Of course, that doesn't make formal systems, immune systems, or anti-spam screen savers useless.

Re:Futility

[Lonesome Squash]

I can't believe I forgot to bash Microsoft. Okay, here it goes: Vulnerability is inevitable. As the sophistication of your defence grows, so does its complexity (generally) and therefore (generally) it creates new opportunities for attack.

But that level of vulnerability is in this case completely swamped by the utterly inexcusable inattention that MS has paid to basic security at the design and feature packaging phase.

To extend the analogy, it didn't take HIV to jeopardize the health of those who share needles or who have numerous, unprotected, anonymous, sexual contacts. Nonetheless, HIV like the spam-sending trojan anti-spam screensaver.

Not Surprising

[iBod]

I wonder though, just how many people are going to want to fight spam using an attachemnt that arrives in a spam email?

Well, that's what you get

[millwall]

Fighting back with the same measure is not always the solution.

Fighting violence with violence doesn't work. Why should fighting spam with spam work any better?

Re:Well, that's what you get

[GoodNicsTken]

"Fighting violence with violence doesn't work."

Really? I think history has shown otherwise. Hitler comes to mind.

Spammers know what they are doing is wrong. They are simply modivated by money. This app will cost them money and eventually make Spam unprofitable.

The only concern I have is for innocent people that get misakenly tagged as Spammers and end up with a 10K bandwidth bill.

Re:Well, that's what you get

[HermanAB]

Fighting spam with email, is like fucking for virginity, but fighting violence with violence does work - you just have to kill everybody.

Philosophical Question...

[rdc_uk]

Does it still count as news, to be told something that you KNEW was going to happen, has happened?

OK, for the last time children...

[hackstraw]

1) Don't take candy from strangers.

2) Don't open email attachments from strangers.

-Mom and Dad

Re:OK, for the last time children...

[musikit]

2) Don't open email attachments from strangers.

that should be modified

2) don't open email attachments you weren't expecting from anyone

Re:OK, for the last time children...

[ceeam]

Given the reality it should be rather like this:

"OK, for the last time, Mom and Dad

1) Don't take candy from strangers.

2) Don't open email attachments from strangers.

-children"

I'm not sure about 1 though.

News?

[Renraku]

How many of you didn't see this coming?

Shady programs attract shady characters and shady tactics.

Doesn't matter if its by a major corporation or John Q. Crackdealer.

Semantics

[Meostro]

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.

Wine?

[raistphrk]

Does the "screen saver" work in Wine? I want the benefits of the trojan without the overhead of an antivirus program.

Obligatory File Extension Hiding Reminder

[prandal]

When the Windows user has file extension hiding turned on (Microsoft's default), the attachment yohavewon.txt.exe appears to them as youhavewon.txt. It doesn't take much for the malware writer to use the standard windows "text file" icon as the application's icon, and the social engineering attack is complete.

I will not believe that Microsoft takes security seriously until they they issue updates for all their operating systems to disable this misfeature permanently.