Fergie's Tech Blog

Storm Trojan Flaunts Crazy Cat to Build Out Botnet

Gregg Keizer writes on ComputerWorld:

After lying low for several weeks, hackers responsible for spreading the Storm Trojan have returned to the attack with e-mail that leads to an exploit-filled Web site and a laughing cat, said researchers today.

Storm -- also known as Nuwar or Peacomm -- is a Trojan horse designed to compromise Windows-powered computers, then add those machines to a growing botnet. Although the size of the botnet Storm has acquired has been disputed, the most conservative estimates put it in the hundreds of thousands.

The malware has been seeded using several attack vectors, but the most common have been e-mail campaigns that contain attachments, or which link to malicious Web sites. Those sites then infect visiting vulnerable PCs using drive-by downloads or by convincing users to click on additional links that then download an executable.

posted by Fergie @ 10/12/2007 11:12:00 AM