Russian Hacker Attack
Like the previous team Microsoft has built for worms like Sasser and MSBlast, the Download. Ject payload detection and removal tool is available on the Redmond, Washington-based developer’s website. It’s small, just 118 KB.
The tool sniffs for the Trojan Berbew — the payload that Download.Ject injected into end users’ PCs via vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer — and deletes them.
While the initial attack was mild compared to, say, Sasser or even MyDoom, Microsoft used scary language in the tool’s online description.
“When this Trojan runs on the user’s computer, it can carry out various actions, adding web tracking to capture sensitive data, such as login names and passwords, or opening fake conversation boxes that prompt the user to enter sensitive data, such as ATM card codes. credit card numbers or other sensitive data,” Microsoft said on the site.
Tools of this type have been very popular with users, who have downloaded millions of copies from Microsoft’s site. Since the MSBlast cleaner was released in January, about 40 million consumers have used the tools, Microsoft said.
The cleaner is Microsoft’s latest effort to combat it. On July 2, the company released a critical Windows update that disables the ADODB component. Stream, which hackers used to invisibly plant Trojans on users’ computers.
Although Microsoft released a slew of patches on Tuesday, no permanent limit was released for the gap used during the attack.
*This story is courtesy of Techweb. com.