Trojan delivers unwanted gift to Windows PCs

A new Trojan horse program was infecting PCs on Wednesday, exploiting a hole in Windows systems to sneak onto computers, then dropping adware or spyware or turning them into zombies, according to several Internet security companies.

The Trojan, dubbed Exploit-WMF (Windows Meta File), was rated a category 2 level risk, meaning it had the potential to continue to spread, said Dave Cole, director of security response at Symantec.

The exploit “is misusing a function in the WMF library in Windows,” dropping onto the machine a downloader Trojan “that pulls down its big brother, a more sophisticated Trojan” from a server on the Internet, he said.

“Then it might try to pull down adware, spyware or a bot program,” that can turn the computer into a zombie to be used for attacking other machines or sending spam, or just leave a hole on the computer through which sensitive data could be stolen, Cole said.

Kaspersky Lab rated the vulnerability “highly critical” and predicted that “new modifications of these programs may well appear in the near future.”

Full story: ZDNet News