Topic: Trojan masquerades as Skype update

[Clive]

Joris Evers
CNET News.com
October 18, 2005, 09:25 BST

A malicious application is trying to sneak onto PCs by pretending to be an update to the popular VoIP application

Cybercriminals are spreading a malicious Trojan horse under the guise of an update to Skype, email security firm MessageLabs said on Monday.

The Trojan horse, a variant of IRCbot, arrives in an email purporting to be an update to Skype, the popular Internet telephony application. Once opened the malicious software displays a phoney installation error message. It then blocks access to security updates and installs a back door on computers, MessageLabs said in a statement.

The email can have one of five different subject lines, which always refers to Skype. One, for example, reads: "Skype for Windows 1.4 - Have you got the new Skype?"

The email body text advertises Skype and urges the user to run the attached file to find out more, MessageLabs said.

The email carrying the Trojan horse isn't widespread; MessageLabs has intercepted 150 copies since Sunday. It is the first such attack that pretends to be from Skype and users should watch out for such "social engineering", the company said.

Cybercriminals always try new things to dupe users into running malicious code. They have masked their Trojan horses as porn images, security updates, messages from system administrators, news photos and many other things.