Two New Strains of Trojan Downloader on the Loose

London, 7 July 2005 – MessageLabs, the leading provider of email security and management services to businesses, is warning computer users to be on their guard against two new Trojan downloaders being spammed out. MessageLabs has intercepted over 54,000 copies of email-borne malware since the early hours of today.

Both downloaders have the same email characteristics. The email purports to be a spam report coming spoofed from a admin@ address requesting users to take action in order to prevent there email account from being shut down.

Recipients are therefore being tricked into opening the malicious files, which once activated drops a cope of one of the executable files onto infected machines opening up there machines to hackers.

The first copy of strain one was intercepted today at 01:18 GMT, while the second strain was stopped at 02:06 GMT.

Email characteristics:

SUBJECT: Spam Report
ATTACHMENT: report.log.exe
BODY:
Dear user,
Your e-mail account was used to send a huge amount of unsolicited spam messages during the recent week. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and confirm the attached document so you will not run into any future problems with the online service. If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to cancel your membership.

Virtually yours,
Network Administrator Team
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Downloader-ABC
FILESIZE: 1680
COUNT: 20855
1ST SEEN: 2005-07-07 01:18:30
NAI: Downloader-ABC
FSEC: N/A
DETAILS: This one is FSG-packed, it downloads
http://www.distributed-hosting.com/ne.exe

NAI: W32/Dumaru.gen@MM
FSEC: Backdoor.Win32.Dumador.cx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Downloader-XZ
FILESIZE: 2779
COUNT: 33931
1ST SEEN: 2005-07-07 02:06:09
NAI: Downloader-XZ
FSEC: Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Small.arf
DETAILS:
Downloads
http://www.zaminbank.net/ftp/file.exe
NAI: PWS-Reox
FSEC: N/A
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Detection
MessageLabs detected this virus proactively, using its unique and patented Skeptic™ predictive heuristics technology.

For further information, please visit the MessageLabs website at: www.messagelabs.com/intelligence

About MessageLabs
MessageLabs is the world's leading provider of email security and management services with more than 12,000 clients and offices in eight countries. For more information, please visit http://www.messagelabs.com