The Hindu Business Line : Websense alert on virus attack

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Coimbatore Feb. 20 Websense Security Labs has received reports of a Trojan, which claimed the Australian Prime Minster of having suffered a heart attack.

The Trojan, formed by several different components, monitors the users access to Web pages besides keeping track of them, key-logging everything the user does.

It also contains a special module, which it uses for phishing (an act of tricking someone to give confidential information).

A Websense release put the infected victims (at the time of the alert) at over 2,500.

Australia's Commonwealth Bank and Westpac account holders, it is learnt, had fallen victims of a phishing scam, in which the malicious code revealed the physical location of affected IP addresses using Google Maps.

Besides the two-targeted banks in Australia, accountholders in others such as Kasikom Bank in Thailand and Spain's Banco de Valencia, BBVA, Caja Madrid and Unicaja had also reported of the attack.

Bank of America and the Wells Fargo in the US and five banks in Germany such as Sparkasse, Deutsche Bank, Gad, Commerz Bank and Post Bank also fell victim.

Websense believes that the hackers use Google Maps to assist in identity theft.

The hackers, it is learnt, can correlate user information acquired from the key-logger with knowledge of where a user is located from Google Maps to impersonate them.

This information would help them (the hackers) access bank accounts and social security numbers.

Recipients of the e-mail, it is learnt, were encouraged to click on a link to obtain the updated information on the Prime Minister's health.

This link, while taking users to a Web page that downloaded malicious code to their PC, was found to display the `error: page not found' message.

Security experts advise users to be on guard against such tricks.