"People have to treat instant messaging as they have been taught to treat e-mail -- with suspicion -- and not open suspicious attachments," said Natalie Lambert, an analyst at Forrester Research. "We have to start applying what we have learned with e-mail to these other applications."
There is a new worm making the rounds, targeting the popular Yahoo Messenger application with the purpose of hijacking PCs and installing malicious software on them.
Experts at FaceTime Security Labs discovered the worm two weeks ago using a "honeypot" trap set up to monitor the activity of viruses, Trojans, and other malicious software.
The worm, dubbed Yh032.explr, marks the first time that researchers have encountered malicious software that installs its own Web browser on a PC without the user's permission.
"This is one of [the] oddest and more insidious pieces of malware we have encountered in years," said Tyler Wells, senior director of research at FaceTime. "This is the first instance of a complete Web browser hijack without the user's awareness. Rogue browsers seem to be the hot new thing among hackers."
sources : Read the rest of the story
Comments
Post a Comment