If you’re a fan of less than legal means of obtaining music, videos, and/or apps, avoid downloading the free “Walk and Text” app from the Android market. While it may seem like a deal considering the real Walk and Text seels for $1, it’s actually far from it — it’s a trojan. It isn’t the most nefarious of trojans, though it’s damaging nonetheless.
Once downloaded, this fake Walk and Text app grabs such information as your phones IMEI number, contact list, and other private data which is then sent back to a remote server. From there, every single contact in your contact list with a phone number is a text message saying:
“Hey, just downloaded a pirated App of the Internet, Walk and Text for Android. I’m stupid and cheap, it costed only 1 buck. Don’t steal like I did!”
Yeah, pretty embarrassing not only because it makes you look like a thieving idiot, but also a thieving idiot who doesn’t have a good grasp on basic English grammar. Of course, if you don’t have a texting plan, paying for several hundred text messages at ~$0.20 a pop won’t be all that entertaining either. You’ve been warned…
Somehow I don’t think this is exactly what Energizer had in mind…
Users of Energizer’s USB DUO Battery Charger are going to want to sever all connections to their computers ASAP. According to the US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team), USB DUO installs a silent yet rather nasty trojan virus that effectively turns your PC into a bot, allowing outsiders access to your PC and digital belongings, and ultimately, gives them total control.
Woried users should pay close attention to a file named “Arucer.dll” using port 7777 as that is the main culprit. The first step is to completely remove the Energizer program, which will effectively cut off the automatically updating trojan. But if I were you, I’d go the extra mile and toss the “Acrucer.dll” out the window too. You can find it in the windows32 folder. You can’t ever be too careful.
Let’s hope next time Energizer is a bit more meticulate in coding and releasing software that is free from viruses, eh?
Slashdot > Computer World
- November 18, 2009 4:03 pm
Vodafone and Verizon Wireless users have a new threat to watch out for in their inbox. A new virus claiming to be from either Vodafone or Verizon comes with a subject of “Your credit balance is over the limit”. The danger comes by way of an attached virus that the email details as an “balance checker”. Whatever you do, do not open it or run the attached program. Doing so invites in a nasty little Trojan with name of “Regrun” that hosts a nasty program flagged as “Mal/Zbot-P”.
It’s extremely important to know that the above Trojan is associated with a reported $100 million+ dollars that has already been stolen from victims’ accounts. With that said, the intentions of this Trojan are to gather login information to banking and other financial based sites. Avoiding emails that contain the message as detailed above is your best bet. Anyone get bitten yet? If so, how hard was it to get rid of? Share the details below.
Zedomax > Geek With A Laptop
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Snow Leopard’s official release is almost here. While bigger tech sites and other important figures got to take Leopard for an early test drive, more normal and lesser people like mwah are anxiously waiting for tomorrow. One feature of Snow Leopard that has so far gone under the radar is that of virus protection. Several people have found pop ups warning them of potential virus in email attacments or web downloads. How exactly does it work and is it really that effective?
According to Ars Technica, a small odyssey into the depths of the new operating system, one can find a particular .plist file at “/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.plist”> that highlights the inner workings of this new found quest for digital protection. While it is a nice addition, it’s doubtful that Apple will update this file or virus definitions all that often as really there aren’t any viruses for Mac save for a few. Still, the effort is greatly appreciated and we may even be pleasantly surprised with this new forary Apple is undertaking.
On an ending note, you’ll want to know that Apple’s new trojan/virus scanner only works with Safari, Firefox, iChat, Entourage, Mail, and Thunderbird so far meaning email attachments and web downloads are the only things getting scrutinized for now. External volumes and other mediums are left out of the party at this time.
Are you happy/sad/skeptical/could care less with Apple’s addition of entry level virus protection? Do you think Apple will continue developing this new addition into something more?
Source: Ars Technica
