Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have advised
computer users to think carefully about how they remedy virus
infections, following news that the Chinese police are to release a
clean-up program written by the author of the Fujacks
worm.
According to media reports
from China, authorities are planning to issue a fix to the
Fujacks worm which turns icons into a picture of a panda burning
joss-sticks. Controversially, the utility has been written by Li
Jun, the suspect author of the virus.
"Hackers and virus writers have shown themselves to be
irresponsible and untrustworthy and I certainly wouldn't choose to
run their code on my computer," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "Additionally, the Fujacks virus
left some infected files unable to run. That hardly suggests that
the author took quality assurance seriously when he constructed his
malware. Our recommendation to computer users would be to clean
their PCs with professional tools written by security experts."
Chinese police arrested
Li Jun, and five other people, in connection with the creation and
distribution of the Fujacks worm earlier this week. Li Jun was said
in a police statement to have earned more than US $12,500 by
selling the malware to other internet hackers. Chinese media have
claimed that Li was motivated to create the virus after he failed
to find a career in the computer security industry.
In the final quarter of 2006 alone, Sophos detected 31,000
different webpages containing versions of the Fujacks malware.
The Fujacks virus changes icons of infected
programs to a picture of a panda holding joss-sticks.
Sophos notes that this isn't the first time that a virus author
has tried to write an anti-virus program.
"Malware authors have tried to write anti-virus programs in the
past. For instance, Stormbringer of the Phalcon/SKISM virus-writing
gang - whose real name was Mike Ellison - wrote a utility to
clean-up the SMEG virus, and Mark Washburn who created the V2P6
polymorphic virus also wrote anti-virus software," continued
Cluley. "However, the public tends to trust the security
researchers who have not been tainted by writing viral code."
Users of Sophos anti-virus products are
already protected against the Fujacks worm. Sophos continues to
recommend that users exercise caution about what software they run
on their computers, don't use an administrator account for
day-to-day work, write-protect network shares which contain
corporate applications, and run the very latest security
software.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.