Bitcoin Harvesting Trojan Disseminating Through Twitter

A company specializing in computer security has cautioned that malevolent web-links are currently disseminating across Twitter resulting in malicious software, which can harvest the virtual currency Bitcoin. GMA News published this dated September 6, 2011.

Actually WRS (Web Reputation Services) recently came across malevolent condensed URLs that were spammed throughout Twitter, apparently having one .JPEG file hosted on certain Facebook domain. But, rather than being an image file, the .JPEG was one executable, which Trend Micro detected as WORM_KOLAB.SMQX. An online search on Twitter to obtain the picture archive showed up the latest list that included the end-users sending out the same malevolent web-link.

Specifically, Trend Micro explained that at the time end-users sent a tweet, one malevolent web-link followed, having the letters "hahaha!!!" which was posted within the retweet as well along with Twitter's reply system.

Moreover, according to Paul Pajares scam analyst at Trend Micro, following the web-links divert end-users onto the condensed http://t.co URL, with the majority of visitors belonging to Indonesia. Cyber-criminals, seeking to get visitors for opening the URL, use the Facebook website as bait via its inclusion into the web-link having the malware. And when the mentioned web-link is clicked, end-users get directed onto another one on Facebook.com. Starting September 2, 2011, there have been about 600 short messages posted that contained the identical web-link, Pajares reports. GMA News published this.

One more malware item detected as BKDR_BTMINE.MNR, harvesting Bitcoin, which Trend Micro tracked, has been lately made up-to-date to make possible DDoS assaults. This Trojan is the most complicated among its group as it packs 3 separate authentic Bitcoin harvesting programs. When loaded, it pulls down drivers for sending and receiving messages from the GPU, while interacting with around 2,000 hard-coded Internet Protocol addresses.

Meanwhile, Karl Dominguez threat response engineer stated that the value of a Bitcoin was over $8; however that was persistently increasing. According to him, as Bitcoins utilized peer-to-peer sharing, the costs borne happened to be far less than if money were transferred via financial institutions.

Eventually it's advisable that Bitcoin users use updated anti-viruses, while exercise caution with web-links on social-networking sites.

Related article: Bitcoin Victimized with malware - Kaspersky Lab

» SPAMfighter News - 9/14/2011