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McAfee Disclosed that Malware Spreads through Skype, G-Talk, MSN and Other IM Services

Security experts at McAfee have recognized a malware that can easily contaminate the computers whose users mostly depends on renowned messaging application to stay connected with their friends, family and business associates. The spiteful element is capable of dispersing through Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk, Pidgin and even through the web chat of facebook.

Niranjan Jayanand, Research Scientist at McAfee revealed a file called PictureXXX.JPG_www.facebook.com comes from the malware, as published by softpedia.com on August 30, 2012.

The victim will receive a message from an unidentified user, purporting a funny link or interesting video. On following it, the malware in question will be downloaded automatically from the linked site.

The bug is able to perform many undesirable activities on the victim's computer including the bypass of any current firewall by pointing itself as a permitted program. It creates copies of itself into several folders and conceals them. It forms a run entry that will do machine reboots every time. It explores the computer for Yahoo Updates, AV solutions, Windows and modules, and then attempts to enable them, it modifies IE's start page, Firefox, and Chrome's preference file.

An order is received by remote attacker to list instant messenger windows in the victim's machine and post the message that assures very interesting video so as to extend itself further or the similar message in a facebook chat after having sending a chat request on facebook chat window.

The malware reproduce via social network (Facebook) through an Ajax command.

Fortunately, it's easy to eliminate the bug from the victim's machine. We destroy the running instances of this process that uses process explorer or the task manager. The start-up entry by the malware must be cleaned and also to be ignored after its' reloading or rebooting says Jayanand in another statement published by ehackingnews.com on August 31, 2012.

And , as a general advice to avoid becoming victim, don't click on any links you are sent through instant message or if u can't then confirm from your friend to make sure that they really did send you something, concluded by experts.

Related article: McAfee Slams Microsoft over Vista Security

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