Spam Trojan Installs Own Antivirus Scanner

Posted on 22-10-2006

Veteran malware researcher Joe Stewart was fairly sure he'd seen it all until he started poking at the SpamThru Trojan-a piece of malware designed to send spam from an infected computer.

The Trojan, which uses peer-to-peer technology to send commands to hijacked computers, has been fitted with its own anti-virus scanner-a level of complexity and sophistication that rivals some commercial software.
"This the first time I've seen this done. [It] gets points for originality," says Stewart, senior security researcher at SecureWorks, in Atlanta, Ga.

"It is simply to keep all the system resources for themselves-if they have to compete with, say, a mass-mailer virus, it really puts a damper on how much spam they can send," he added.