China Blamed for Unleashing Trojans World Over

A new research blames China for unleashing an onslaught of trojans that has been infecting computers worldwide.

Finjan noticed that Chinese websites were increasingly being involved in cyber attacks. Various criminal gangs are employing highly sophisticated techniques that hide malicious software and help them penetrate standard security solutions, it said.

The security firm said that one among the many websites traced to a government office of China. According to it, many organizations already have been victims to industrial espionage by Chinese hackers.

The Malicious Code Research Center of Finjan said that since it had investigated a high level attack that manipulated zero-day exploits and used other new techniques for hacking, it discovered a criminal gang with centralized activity in China. Vnunet published this on December 4, 2007.

Researchers at Finjan found that the network directed users to Trojan-embedded websites. The company has been monitoring computers that are infected with password-stealing trojans originating from China.

The study said that once the Trojan is installed on the users' computers, the malware becomes active and starts transmitting data to remote websites within the network. Other sites within the network regulate the attack based on information about the number of visitors to the malicious site and the number of infected computers.

The malicious Trojan also gathers information about the user's system such as its operating system, the applications loaded, security programs installed, and personal data like username and password.

Chief Technology Officer, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, at Finjan said that the development is causing problems for individual, enterprises and governments alike as defense solutions like URL filtering and anti-virus are ineffective against them.

After the Trojan collects the information, it feeds the data to other sites to help make the attack more sophisticated, Finjan explained.

The news of the Trojan comes with the warning by M15 to 300 UK CEOs and security professionals about rising risks from hackers in China.

Earlier too, the UK had blamed China for hacking its government servers. Other countries also pointed at China for attacks like one on the Pentagon and another in France, both in September 2007 and several attacks on German Internet in October 2007.

Related article: China’s Best Initiatives To Deal With Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 12/15/2007