Suckers…

If you’ve been reading here for awhile, you may remember my little rant regarding http://jonathanmurray.com/greymatter/archives/00000330.htm CoolWebSearch, or my http://jonathanmurray.com/greymatter/archives/00000193.htm Worst of the Worst, also featuring CoolWebSearch, or my http://jonathanmurray.com/greymatter/archives/00000245.htm little plug for a program to remove CWS. Well, if you’ve missed all those, don’t ignore this one! CoolWebSearch has now been found to contain a very real threat to your personal data, including programs that record your keystrokes and send them off to whoever. Bank account numbers, credit card info, loveletters, diary entries… none of it is safe or private if you have this maliscious crap running on your computer.

Millions of Windows Users at Risk by Massive ID and Bank Account Theft Piggybacking on CoolWebSearch – Reported by Aunty Spam’s Net Patrol

The implications are staggering. Internet security software company Sunbelt Software was investigating CoolWebSearch, a spyware package, when they noticed that stowing away in the CoolWebSearch download were two trojans, a spam zombie engine, and a keystroke logging program. It was the keylogger program which took their breath away.

The keystroke logging program, undetectable by current anti-spyware and anti-virus programs, was scouring their machine for usernames, passwords, and bank account information, and reporting it back to its mothership. And what a mothership it was. Or, perhaps, motherlode is a better term. Following the keylogger’s trail, Sunbelt’s Patrick Jordan found a massive server, located in Texas, to which thousands of machines infected with the keylogger were reporting back daily. The keyloggers were filling up a log file as fast as they could with usernames, passwords, bank account information, and more. As soon as one log file would get to a certain size, it would be zipped up and another would be opened.

http://www.aunty-spam.com/millions-of-windows-users-at-risk-by-massive-id-and-bank-account-theft-piggybacking-on-coolwebsearch/ Read it all.