By Ingrid Marson, 13 October 2004 07:40
NEWS A new attempt to entice users to download a malicious Trojan horse has been discovered after it was posted on a swathe of internet news groups over the weekend.
The message claims to contain pictures of English footballer David Beckham caught in a compromising position with "a Spanish hooker", but when the file is opened it instead installs the Hackarmy Trojan horse.
This program turns a PC into a "zombie" computer that can be controlled remotely by hackers, and used to distribute spam or launch denial of service attacks.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for antivirus firm Sophos, said the file has been posted to thousands of different news sites.
This is not the first time the Hackarmy virus writer has used pictures of celebrities to recruit zombie computers. In the past internet postings have advertised pictures of singer Britney Spears, or Osama Bin Laden, according to Cluley.
Ingrid marson writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Brian Burkill
I saw this one, and the Bin Liner ones, and the Ronald Raegan, and the Tony Blair, George Bush, Saddam ones. The list is endless, but they are not very successful. My ISP converts it into a harmless text file, so you can download it safely and rename it if you wish.
Not a problem at all.
2. Bruce Boomstick
Is there ever a week when Graham Cluley fails to appear in the news?
His chosen specialist subject "the bleeding obvious".
Come on there must be more virus experts out there - let's hear from them. Graham and his product have had more than enough free publicity!!!!!!!!!
3. Goten Xiao
Get a decent antivirus package that includes email scanning. Update it every day. Sorted.
I actually have a copy of Netsky.Z saved as a .zip (inside a passworded .zip) on my hard drive... AVG still picks it up...
And to anyone stupid enough to open the email in the first place; learn how to recognise spam.