Lycos Anti-Spam Screensaver Inspires Trojan 167
Even though it's been withdrawn, the Lycos anti-spam screensaver is not forgotten.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."
Re:tojans... (Score:1, Informative)
http://info.lycos.com/pressroom/100604_press.
and you just go check a mail server log who administrates the netblocks that pump the most spam
uhh... that's right, daum / kornet
Semantics (Score:5, Informative)
Will everyone please use the proper terms for these objects? "Misnaming Viruses" would've been my choice for the peeve poll [slashdot.org]:
A virus [wikipedia.org] is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents.
A Trojan [wikipedia.org] is a malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software.
A computer worm [wikipedia.org] 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 [linuxmafia.com] 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 [wikipedia.org], there are very few true viruses in the wild these days.
Re:Obligatory File Extension Hiding Reminder (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...