The Storm Trojan. One of the nastiest viruses to hit the ‘Net in some time has really been active as of late. As such, I feel I need to help get the word out on this little bug. For most of you, spam is an everyday thing; it clutters your mail and asks you benign, but annoying, questions or offers you advertisements or other products (you know what I’m talking about). Unfortunately, the amount of messages with links to the Storm trojan has really shot up: older figures have “account confirmation” spam at an initial 18%, but recent looks have been as high as 35%. For being just discovered back in January, this little worm has been busy…

Unfortunately, it’s more than just a pesky worm that causes the problems. The delivery mechanism isn’t an attachment, like most virus carriers, but rather temporary account information and a request to change your account information-for your security. The attached URL for the supposed website is, in fact, an IP address. Once a user reaches the address, it prompts the user to install a ‘Secure login applet’, which is, in fact, the Storm trojan. The Storm trojan is specifically designed to grow a hacker’s botnet, so it’s especially dangerous.

What is follows is usually the contents (or approximately what the contents look like) of an email designed to infect your PC:

To: [removed)
Subject: Your Member Info
From: "Cat Lovers" [EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED]
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:01:11 +0800

Subject: Greetings, Welcome To Cat Lovers.

User Number: (random)
Temp Login ID: user2686
Password ID: qt379

Please Change your login and change your Login Information.

Click on the secure link or paste it to your browser:
[DANGEROUS NUMERIC URL REMOVED]

Enjoy,

Confirmation Dept.
Cat Lovers

Thanks to Nightmaretony of the FARK.com Forum

I assume I shouldn’t need to tell the readers (as well-educated as you are) not to go to any URLs like that, especially if they look like IP addresses. Still, it never hurts to get the word out, and it seems the Storm trojan is as bad as bugs can get; extra care should be taken to avoid this virus, at least because it’s very difficult to remove.  Of course, the best preventative measure is the ability to recognize the virus and it’s assistants. Hopefully, this little PTech episode will save one PC out there…

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