Fan Website for ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Harbors Trojan

A highly-popular PC game named "Assassin's Creed" has a fan website that has been serving one extremely malicious banker Trojan so when interested players visited the site they possibly got trapped during the 8 weeks gone by. Msnbc.msn.com published this dated April 13, 2012.

Referred to as 'Assassincreedfrance.fr' the game enthusiasts' or fans' website in French has a JavaScript that diverts visitors onto one malware site which's based in St. Petersburg (Russia) that effectively turns their PCs into zombies for a ZeuS network-of-bots, Avast a security company stated.

The security company also stated that Assassinscreedfrance.fr was among the 1,841 websites worldwide which got targeted with one particular ZeuS strain in March 2012. Presently, end-users were prevented from using the website, which also didn't have any association with 'Assassin's Creed's' developers Ubisoft, Avast added. Msnbc.msn.com published this dated April 13, 2012.

Notably, ZeuS is designed to facilitate online miscreants with compromising Internet bank accounts as well as pilfering dollars counting to millions. The botnet, according to Avast, managed in yielding its controllers over $100m via hijacking computers at SMBs.

The infection gripping the fan site in the meantime occurs through the JavaScript software an ordinary plug-in for WordPress. Additional websites have been infected via the targeting of various security flaws in WordPress.

Security Analyst Jan Sirmer at Avast Virus Lab while remarking about the assault in discussion stated that the cyber criminals were utilizing one mechanized tool, which was searching some vulnerabilities. It might be that Assassincreedfrance.fr had become attack-prone via utilizing an obsolete WordPress edition despite the latter's plug-in being in an updated form. For the other websites, it could be said without hesitation that older software applications along with plug-ins were frequent means for spreading infection, Sirmer analyzed. Blog.avast.com published this during the 2nd-week of April 2012.

Glancing swiftly at more than 6,000 contaminated websites having the most renowned ".com" domain name indicates that 13.6% of these had some connection with WordPress flaws.

Writing within the personal blog post, Sirmer pointed out that the problem wasn't unknown, adding that it was chiefly happening in a situation of non-updating of the plug-ins.

Related article: FNWA Alerts Residents about Trojan-laced Scam E-mails

» SPAMfighter News - 4/24/2012