If you think you are a super genius smart a$$ to download a pirated version of Avatar or 3idiots, then thing again. A new Trojan called FakeAV is smarter than you. Symantec, maker of Norton Anti-Virus, has cautioned people from visiting certain blogs which post to give you a free download of the latest movie.

The general practice is to host a blog on a reputable site with links to new movie releases, which redirect users to a malicious website hosting malware…

For example, the film ‘Ninja assassin’ was released in Dec 2009, and in order to watch it online for free, users may have searched for phrases that include keywords such as movie, free, video, online, watch, etc. along with the movie title.
When a user clicks on the link, it redirects to a blog. Then, once the user clicks on an image that appears to be a video player window, it redirects to a codec download. Unfortunately, this turns out to be a fake codec.

What are codec’s?
Codec’s are needed to run different types of media files.
Symantec identified these threats as Trojan.Fakeavalert for Windows. In a further twist to the Trojans payload, all .mp2 and .mp3 files found on the infected computer are converted to Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. This creates problems for security researchers who are burning the midnight oil to create software to remove the infected code. So if you are a music junkie and have a huge music collection make sure you have backed up your library.

Tags | attack, trojan