The Trojan horse plays a Shockwave animation by Italian cartoonist
Bruno Bozzetto.
Experts at Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control,
have discovered a Trojan horse that disguises its malicious intent
by playing a humorous animation.
The Troj/Agent-FWO Trojan
horse plays the popular "Yes & No" Shockwave video created by
the Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto, but only after embedding
itself on users' computers and downloading further malicious code
from the internet.
"Yes & No", which was published on the internet by Bozzetto
in 2001, is a humorous video about how obeying the rules of the
road does not always make sense. Hundreds of thousands of people
are believed to have watched the online animation. According to
Sophos experts, the Trojan horse is playing the animation as a
smokescreen as it silently infects Windows computers.
"It's important to realise that the animation itself is not
malicious - thousands of artists, like Bruno Bozzetto, have created
funny movies whose only negative can be the hours that have been
spent watching them," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "But the Trojan horse which is
playing the animation in this instance is dangerous. Troj/Agent-FWO
is exploiting society's predilection for forwarding humorous
animations on to friends and family in its attempt to infect as
many people as possible."
Sophos recommends companies automatically update their corporate
virus protection, and defend their users with a consolidated solution to defend against the
threats of viruses, spyware, hackers and spam.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.