Microsoft Eradicates Password Stealers From More Than Two Million Computers
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: microsoft, trojan, virus
Redmond (WA) - A Microsoft automatic update has eradicated password stealing programs from more than two million computers. Writing on the TechNet blog, Matt McCormack says the company’s Malicious Software Removal Tool detected and erased Trojan horse programs designed to steal passwords from popular online games like World of Warcraft, Valve’s Steam Client and Lineage Online. Back on June 10, Microsoft sent an automatic update which upgraded the tool to fight against the password stealers and 700,000 machines were restored in just the first day.
Several malicious programs were wiped out, but most belong to the Win32/Taterf family which is actually a mutation of an earlier password stealing program. According to Microsoft data, China, Taiwan and Spain had the most infected machines. The software tool removed the Trojans from more than 500,000 machines in China alone. Approximately 213,000 machines were cleaned from the United States.
"These are ridiculous numbers of infections my friends, absolutely mind-boggling; many, many whelps," said McCormack.
The high infection rate in China and Taiwan is probably due to the prevalence of illegal software and the lack of decent anti-virus software. In addition, Lineage and other online games enjoy a huge following in Asia, but are relatively unknown in the United States. McCormack believes many of the Trojans are transferred via infected USB drives or network shares. LAN parties and the prevalence of Internet Cafes in Asia may have something to do with this.
McCormack explains that the password stealing Trojans transfer game logins to a central repository and hackers then try to sell the information to the highest bidder. Then criminals log into the accounts and steal all of the virtual gold and equipment. The accounts can also be used to funnel gold to other players.
You can read McCormack’s TechNet blog entry here.
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Two million malware infections on Windows systems is not significant. What is impressive is the shear number of assumptions McCormack makes about the reason for their prevalence.
Using XP SP2 i have NEVER heard of anyone getting an infection without stupid behavior: it is not enough to click a link on a web page: you must allow the install!
if clicking on a strange link and then allowing an even stranger install to take place is not WHELP behaviour we have very few systems that are imune to infection , because Murphy's law states that you cant make a system that is idiot-proof because idiots are very creative and any system that is idiot-proof will only be used by idiots.
please remove this myth of super infectious malware that infect your machine by merely installing windows on it. Windows get more machines infected because there are more machines with windows installed. Linux NEVER was virus-free and on corporate systems Linux Based viruses are more prevalent because on corporate systems the windows based protections are more effective and react faster than Linux based ones, since they have a larger number of machines to report the infection from and a larger knowledge base to counter the virus.
Windows XP SP2 is obsolete - you should be using Vista or XP SP3 at least. Or are you one of those XP-forever anti-Vista types?
Since when did corporations start having Linux virus problems? Are you saying that they are using Linux instead of Windows now? Do college grads have to learn Linux in order to get a job?
The only time a Windows PC has virus problems is when it's hooked up to the public Internet. The Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack, not hackers. If Microsoft created their own Internet through MSN then the whole world would be better off. Maybe there is some truth to the rumors that they may be buying AOL.