New trend: Trojan which steals your pics instead of your text
That private stash of, ah, special-interest jpgs? Lifted
Posted in Security, 6th November 2012 08:27 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
Miscreants have developed a strain of malware that steals image files from compromised systems.
The Pixsteal-A Trojan dispenses with the conventional tactic of only stealing text files, instead concentrating on uploading .jpg, .jpeg, and .dmp (memory dump) files from infected machines onto a remote FTP server.
The switch in tactics reflects the changing way that users store potentially sensitive information, an advisory by Trend Micro explains.
"Information theft routines have been mostly limited to information that is in text form, thus this malware poses a whole new different risk for users," writes Raymart Paraiso, a threat response engineer at Trend Micro. "Users typically rely on photos for storing information, both personal and work-related, so the risk of information leakage is very high. Collected photos can be used for identity theft, blackmail, or can even be used in future targeted attacks." ®
Send corrections
Data control in the cloud
The new Office Garage series:
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
