Identity Theft News

Trojan malware on the upswing for data theft

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Security researchers from Trend Micro are warning that Trojan malware - data-stealing programs that come disguised as harmless files - have grown in use over the past year to 93 percent of all data-stealing malware.

The IT security vendor reported that Trojans' share of data-stealing malware grew to that figure in Q1 2009, up from 87 percent in 2008. In 2007, 52 percent of data-stealing malware were Trojans.

Cybercriminals use Trojans to steal proprietary information such as online banking credentials, credit card numbers, social security numbers and passwords from compromised networks and PCs.

"As a threat category, data-stealing malware is experiencing tremendous growth because it serves the needs of financially motivated criminals who leverage the internet for what it does best - provid[ing] valuable information," said Jamz Yaneza, threat research manager for Trend Micro.

Security researchers last week spotted spam emails exploiting the death of Michael Jackson to spread malicious links to files that appeared to be YouTube videos, but were actually Trojan downloaders.

Websense said last week that a file called Michael.Jackson.videos.scr located on a legitimate site hosted in Australia would download three malicious files when executed.

Another spam email spotted last week purporting to be a "critical update" for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express contained a link to download a Trojan called ZBot.