Illegal copies of Windows seven RC contain malware, meant to build a huge botnet. That’s what computer security company Damballa discovered last week.
The copies were spread on the 24th of April on bit-torent websites. They contain an embedded Trojan that, once downloaded, will infect another PC with malware.
The staff of Damballa successfully took over the server used to manage the bot-net, on the 10th of May. The speed of the Trojan infecting computers was around 552 users an hour on average, according to Damballa.
On Monday around the noon, already 3.452 computers had been connecting to the server to request malware to download. New infections still happen every day.
Because of Damballa taking over the management server, no new installations are accessible for the ‘bot herder’. A bot herder is a cracker who uses automated techniques to scan specific network ranges with the target to find vulnerable systems like computers without the newest security patches, on which the cracker will install his bot program.
But the attackers had way too much time to infect computers. Damballa estimates around twenty-seven thousand successful installations. The countries with the highest rate of infections are the U.S. with ten percent, and Holland and Italy with both seven percent.
7 Responses
Windows 7 supposedly not easy to be copied.
@Mrs. Turaz: Microsoft released a free-to-try demo of Windows 7, in bèta phase.
But there are crackers out there who downloaded it, and embedded a trojan into it, and uploaded it as a RC version (Release Candidate, the version close to the final version).
So be sure not to fall in the trap laid by those vicious crackers.
I’m only coming to grips with Vista.
Thanks for the info!
You’re welcome.
Thanks for sharing.
This botnet stuff is out of control