Fake Lycos screensaver hides Trojan

7 December 2004 15:30 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Lycos Europe's controversial Make Love Not Spam campaign seems to be causing the company more headaches now that virus writers are distributing fake downloads of the dropped screensaver.

We originally commented on the news story here. Following Lycos Europe's decision to take the screensaver offline.

According to the Register, a business technology news site in the UK: “ The fake screensaver emails contain an attachment with a RAR SFX archive that has embedded key logger Trojan inside, antivirus firm Sophos warns. Infected emails come in emails with subject lines such as "Be the first to fight spam with Lycos screen" and an attachment called "Lycos screensaver to fight spam.zip".

Upon successful installation, the key logging Trojan (Mdropper-IT) sends a message to an Indonesian email address confirming its status. The screensaver file, rather than displaying the Lycos screensaver, displays a blank screen.”

The screensaver, which the company is saying has been too successful, uses idle processing power of the users' computer that its been downloaded to, to increase traffic to spamming websites. The idea is that the increased amount of traffic the website receives will then increase the cost spammers have to pay to keep them running.

Our advice is to delete any email that look suspicious before evening opening it and get yourself a good anti-virus package anti-virus package

Full tags

Software, Online, Websites, Lycos