Sophos

W32/Agobot-NZ

Aliases
  • Backdoor.Win32.Agobot.gen
Category
Type
What to do
Prevalence low high

Summary

 
How it spreads
  • Network shares
Affected operating systems Windows
Characteristics
  • Installs itself in the registry
Included in our products from January 2005 (3.89)
Protection available since 17 November 2004 13:28:57 (GMT)
Last updated 1 December 2004 10:43:05 (GMT)
Detected by All Sophos products

Action

More Information

W32/Agobot-NZ is a backdoor Trojan and worm which spreads to computers protected by weak passwords.

Each time the Trojan is run it attempts to connect to a remote IRC server and join a specific channel.

The Trojan then runs continuously in the background, allowing a remote intruder to access and control the computer via IRC channels.

The Trojan attempts to terminate and disable various anti-virus and security-related programs and modifies the HOSTS file. W32/Agobot-NZ is a backdoor Trojan and worm which spreads to computers protected by weak passwords and to computers infected with variants of W32/MyDoom.

When first run, W32/Agobot-NZ moves itself to the Windows system folder as gmsvc32.exe and creates the following registry entries to run itself on startup:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Gmsvc32
gmsvc32.exe

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
Gmsvc32
gmsvc32.exe

Each time the Trojan is run it attempts to connect to a remote IRC server and join a specific channel.

The Trojan then runs continuously in the background, allowing a remote intruder to access and control the computer via IRC channels.

The Trojan attempts to terminate and disable various anti-virus and security-related programs and modifies the HOSTS file located at %WINDOWS%\System32\Drivers\etc\HOSTS, mapping selected anti-virus websites to the loopback address 127.0.0.1 in an attempt to prevent access to these sites. Typically the following mappings will be appended to the HOSTS file:

127.0.0.1 www.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 securityresponse.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 symantec.com
127.0.0.1 www.sophos.com
127.0.0.1 sophos.com
127.0.0.1 www.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 liveupdate.symantecliveupdate.com
127.0.0.1 www.viruslist.com
127.0.0.1 viruslist.com
127.0.0.1 viruslist.com
127.0.0.1 f-secure.com
127.0.0.1 www.f-secure.com
127.0.0.1 kaspersky.com
127.0.0.1 www.avp.com
127.0.0.1 www.kaspersky.com
127.0.0.1 avp.com
127.0.0.1 www.networkassociates.com
127.0.0.1 networkassociates.com
127.0.0.1 www.ca.com
127.0.0.1 ca.com
127.0.0.1 mast.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 my-etrust.com
127.0.0.1 www.my-etrust.com
127.0.0.1 download.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 dispatch.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 secure.nai.com
127.0.0.1 nai.com
127.0.0.1 www.nai.com
127.0.0.1 update.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 updates.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 us.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 liveupdate.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 customer.symantec.com
127.0.0.1 rads.mcafee.com
127.0.0.1 trendmicro.com
127.0.0.1 www.trendmicro.com

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