Experts at Sophos have detected a new Trojan horse that exploits the controversial Sony DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy protection included on some of the music giant's CDs.
The Troj/Stinx-E Trojan horse appears to have been deliberately spammed out to email addresses, posing as a message from a British business magazine.
Typical emails look as follows:
Subject: Photo Approval Deadline
Message body:
Hello,
Your photograph was forwarded to us as part of an article we are publishing for our December edition of Total Business Monthly. Can you check over the format and get back to us with your approval or any changes? If the picture is not to your liking then please send a preferred one. We have attached the photo with the article here.
If the attached program is run, the Trojan horse copies itself to a file called $sys$drv.exe. Any file with $sys$ in its name is automatically cloaked by Sony's copy-protection code, making it invisible on computers which have used CDs carrying Sony's copy protection.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said,
"Despite its good intentions in stopping music piracy, Sony's DRM copy protection has opened up a vulnerability which hackers and virus writers are now exploiting. We wouldn't be surprised if more malware authors try and take advantage of this security hole, and consumers and businesses alike would be sensible to protect themselves at the earliest opportunity."
Sophos has issued a tool which will detect the existence of Sony's DRM copy-protection on Windows computers, disable its "cloaking" function, and prevent that functionality from re-installing. The tool also detects versions of the Troj/Stinx Trojan horse which exploit the Sony vulnerability.
|
|
Reader Comments: 0
