Vigilante Erazer Trojan

deary65

QUOTE
Here's a first: a Trojan horse that actually helps security pros do their jobs.

Analysts at SophosLabs...have discovered a spyware-borne Trojan, dubbed Troj/Erazer-A, that seeks out and destroys movie and music files that it suspects to be illegal copies transmitted via peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks.

The Trojan looks through P2P file sharing folders, seeking out formats such as AVI, MP3, MPEG, WMV, GIF, and ZIP. When it finds these files, it wipes them out and places a copy of itself in the folder, using tempting names such as game.exe, goporn.exe, nero7.exe, and officexpcrack.exe, according to Sophos.

..."The Erazer Trojan is a vigilante worthy of a Charles Bronson movie, taking the law into its own hands. However, it's perfectly possible for the Trojan to aim poorly and wipe out innocent files, too,...Trojan Erazer could be dangerous because it tries to turn off antivirus applications and other security tools, the researchers observed, noting that its methods are worrisome because it deletes files, steals information, adds itself to the registry, and then drops more malware on the target system.
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95046&WT.svl=news1_1

MercilessKiller

Yes of course it helps security pros do their jobs by turning off anti virus and making the entire system vunerable.. i'm sure they'd rather have peopel with the files!

Silly article.. malware is malware

Bet the guy who made the virus is loving its publicity now!

Quincy_3

LMFAO

Quick lets trust this programme, I mean C'mon lets trust a piece of dubious software to erase so called illegal copies of music or video footage form your machine, Say goodbye to your daughters home video of her wedding as I suspect it just looks at DRM or Encryption, as above Malware is Malware not A:I

Good thread though makes a point of Malware.

Trojan Erazer could be dangerous because it tries to turn off antivirus applications and other security tools, the researchers observed, noting that its methods are worrisome because it deletes files, steals information, adds itself to the registry, and then drops more malware on the target system.

Still, other security monitoring groups consider the risk to be negligible. The French Security Incident Response Team (FrSIRT) ranked Trojan as "low risk," its lowest incident rating.


Aaaah Zee crazy French

Rex_Mundi

I see the article said that most antiviruses should pick this up.

If you get into the habit of scanning every download before you run it, it looks like you should be able to avoid this one.