Monday, January 30, 2012

Super-Powered Malware...

Back in the old days (seems strange saying that considering its not really old) there was a clear-cut distinction between what a Trojan was,  what a Virus was , a Worm etc..Well it seems that those days are gone and a new breed of Malware has emerged recently... a new strain of Super-Powered Malware Dubbed...."Frankenmalware" or "Malware-Sandwiches" that has become a part of the malicious code landscape recently.. According to a recent article from Bitdefender , Cyber-criminals have started mixing malware ingredients between these traditional threat categories to maximize attack impact on potential victims. Trojans with worm capabilities or viruses with Trojan features, and so on.  Here is an excerpt from the article;

"the file infector that accidentally parasites another e-threat. A virus infects executable files; and a worm is an executable file. If the virus reaches a PC already compromised by a worm, the virus will infect the exe files on that PC - including the worm. When the worm spreads, it will carry the virus with it.  The combined features from both pieces of malware will inflict a lot more damage than the creators of either piece of malware may have originally intended.  While most file infectors have built-in propagation mechanisms, just like Trojans and worms (spreading routines for RDP, USB, P2P, chat applications, or social networks), some cannot replicate or spread between computers. And it seems a great idea to “outsource” the transportation mechanism to a different piece of malware (i.e. by piggybacking on a worm, etc.

The article further states that "most likely these Frankenmalware, or “malware sandwiches,” take place spontaneously". The virus actually infects by mistake another piece of malware and ends up using its capabilities to spread.