sinister nasty trojan

Sinister New Spyware Threats Emerge
by Andrew Brandt, Senior Associate Editor;
PC World.com (US)

Issue Date: October 2005


One piece of hostile code uses insidious means to steal personal data,
while another spreads an image of hate.

Two revelations about new threats related to spyware illustrate how the
growing problem of invasive adware and spyware has taken a sinister
turn for the worse.

Florida-based Sunbelt Software, maker of the CounterSpy spyware remover
program, announced that its researchers had discovered a package of
spyware components that criminals can use to steal sensitive financial
and personal information.

The spyware distribution includes, as part of its payload, a Trojan
Horse, dubbed "SRV.SSA-keylogger," that steals the information and
sends it to a remote server. In addition, the distribution includes
difficult-to-remove adware components from more than one company,
including the elusive CoolWebSearch spyware application, which exploits
security loopholes on unpatched Windows computers to install itself
without alerting the user, and remain operational despite attempts to
remove it.

Sunbelt researchers discovered sensitive personal information
(including bank account log-ins, credit card information, and billing
addresses) belonging to thousands of people stored on a server that is
physically located within the United States and that the data thieves
were using as a dead drop for their ill-gotten data.

"What was truly unique about this was that we discovered this
extraordinary cache of user data," says Sunbelt's president, Alex
Eckelberry. "[This] is quite rare."

Protected Information?

Eckelberry explains how the information-stealing scheme works: "It's a
little Trojan that sits there and [reads data stored in] the Protected
Storage area," he says.

Windows XP uses the Protected Storage area to record sensitive
information, such as your browser's AutoComplete histories for URLs,
passwords that you instruct IE to save and enter automatically, and
data you submit to Web sites on SSL-protected forms. The Trojan horse
reads this information--including "search terms, stuff you enter in
forms, passwords, everything you enter at a bank," according to Eric
Sites, Sunbelt's vice president of research and development--and then
forwards the data to the server.

"It's specifically targeting banking information and login accounts to
steal your money," Sites says. "They're looking for credit cards and
address information, so they can purchase stuff online and [the
purchases] can't be blocked."

This is no mere keylogger, Sites adds. "A normal keylogger records
anything that is on your computer. This thing attacks anything that you
filled out in Web forms, so it has your credit card number, the
expiration date, the security code, [and] your address; and it tracks
every Web address that [you've entered] a username and password
[into]."

"It's totally geared for stealing users' accounts and identity
information--everything [the criminals] need to get new credit cards in
your name and empty out your bank accounts," Sites adds.

Trojan a 'Nasty New Strain'

The Srv.SSA-KeyLogger is so new, says Sunbelt, that few antivirus
vendors have developed definitions to remove the threat from infected
machines. Srv.SSA-KeyLogger appears to be a variant of existing forms
of keystroke-stealing Trojan Horses, called Dumador or Nibu.

"To our knowledge, very few AV vendors detect this one," Eckelberry
says. "We do believe Kaspersky has it labeled as
Backdoor.Win32.Dumador.df but I'm fairly certain Symantec does not
catch it. It is very new variant of a well-known Trojan."

"This is not a revolutionary new keylogger, this is a nasty new strain
of a nasty keylogger," Eckleberry says.

He's chronicling the status of the Trojan research on his company blog.

Users of alternative browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, do not store
their autocomplete information in the Protected Storage area, and are
therefore are immune to this Trojan horse. PCs running Windows XP
Service Pack 2 are far less likely to be infected in the first place.

You can use a free tool such as Protected Storage PassView to see
what's stored in your Protected Storage area. To clear out the
Protected Storage area on your PC, open Internet Explorer, and click
Tools, Internet Options. Select the Content tab and then click the
AutoComplete button. To eliminate the threat, clear out all the
checkboxes, and click the Clear Passwords and Clear Forms buttons.

Eckelberry says it was "serendipitous" that his researchers stumbled
upon the server housing the stolen information; it happened while they
were tracing a command that he described as a remote callback, sent
over the Internet to the infected PC in their lab. "I'm not going to
say it was due to anything but investigative curiosity," he says.

Disturbing Discovery

Investigative curiosity also led researchers at Webroot, the
anti-spyware firm that makes the SpySweeper utility, to a bizarre
discovery of a symbol of hate embedded in a spyware distribution.

Late last week, Webroot's researchers discovered a file compressed into
a new variant of the SARS Trojan horse containing the words "ein Volk,
ein REICH, ein Fuhrer !!!" beneath a Nazi swastika rendered in ASCII
text.

The phrase, quoting Adolf Hitler, translates as "one people, one
nation, one leader," and is a popular slogan at Web sites run by white
supremacist groups.

The Trojan itself is very dangerous. "Normally, it sits on your
machine, resident in memory, and waits for some kind of trigger," says
Paul Piccard, Webroot's director of threat research. "If it sees a
secure connection starting, it begins logging that connection. It then
reports [logged information] to a central location."

The malware file that Webroot discovered had been compressed using the
UPX compression method. Accompanying the executable Trojan horse was a
text file containing the swastika and the Hitler quote.

"This is the first hate speech we've heard of [in spyware]," Piccard
says. "I'd hope this is just an isolated thing. This just came out of
nowhere--you don't expect to find it in spyware or adware. It took us
by surprise."

"It could be there for the shock value, or it could be [that the Trojan
was distributed by] people who really believe in this thing," Piccard
said. "It's probably not a joke." In any case, nobody seems to be
laughing.

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