Friday, September 17, 2010

Famous Trojans

Once with the 2005 electoral ferment in Great Britain, a Trojan worked his way in users PC's, masked by a news report related to vice president Tony Blair.
So, a mail that circulated around Albion had as subject the following text:" Tony Blair's e-mail account has been hacked by BBC news". But as soon as a curious person would click on the respective link a Trojan would appear on his computer.
Unlike worms, the Trojan horse doesn't auto reproduce itself on the infected PC, but it disguises as something harmless, like a screensaver. Installed on the PC, the Trojan can capture passwords or user names or can allow a hacker to take over the respective PC.
The creators of the Trojan virus knew that many people were interested in news. When it came to the Tony Blair situation, the need for politic news that public manifested was exploited by the attackers, so they made use of Tony Blair's name to make some victims, according to Sophos.
The Tony Blair attempt wasn't the first time malicious codes creators made use of the British premier's name. Back in 2003, the PC worm Quarters-A contained a string against Blair's politics regarding the integration in the UN. Actually, the worm was after infected as many PCs as possible to facilitate a DOS attack against the site http://www.number-10.gov.uk, site where Tony Blair intentions and politics were clearly stated.
We probably have to deal with Trojans evey day and we don't even know it. But the good thing is that antivirus software detects then right away and that they are virtually harmless for our files, as they only offer backdoors to hackers but don't infect our files.

1 comment: