Experts Alarm Users of Twin Cyber Threat

Bredolab and Fakerean, two latest viruses in the cyber space, are targeting unaware users and causing huge damages, as reported by DNA on November 3, 2009.

Reportedly, the Bredolab virus is widely circulating via spam e-mails. It belongs to the Trojan downloader family, wherein rogue anti-virus programmes are downloaded and installed onto the infected systems, while the users are completely unaware of the process.

Experts further explained that it might be difficult to spot Bredolab Trojan as it functions in background. The Trojan in itself is not destructive; however, it can install harmful computer parasites. Aftereffects of this virus may vary from usual adware-laden pop-ups to losing money through spyware and keyloggers.

Further, to get installed, the most common method adopted by Bredolab involve security or system exploitation, and unknown programs being manually executed by unsuspecting users. Security experts told that e-mails, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), hacked or malicious Web pages, peer-to-peer networks, etc. constitute the distribution channels.

According to experts, the second virus Fakerean also belongs to the Trojan downloader family. They said that Fakerean reaches the victim through compromised websites, and it informs the users that some malware has been detected on their machine.

Similar to ZBot, the Fakerean virus is generally included and distributed as an e-mail attachment, commented the experts. Spam messages have been successful in distributing Fakerean as they included "install.exe", an executable, within a zip archive. If the zip file is downloaded and the "install.exe" file is run by the user, Fakerean Trojan horse will infect the system.

Once installed, the Fakerean virus infuses a malicious code in the memory of the compromised system. It continues to deliver sensitive information from the computer to a remote hacker, the experts argued.

Experts further told that a large number of people received e-mails in October regarding fake detection of malware or spyware on their system. It has been reported that for sure, Fakerean virus was involved in the case.

To conclude, experts suggested that the only way to avoid a system from getting infected by these viruses is to be alert and not to click on e-mails sent by unknown senders.

Related article: Experts Find Two Vulnerabilities in Firefox

» SPAMfighter News - 11/13/2009