Graham Cluley Code Quotations

It appears that whoever wrote Zotob had access to the Mytob source code, ripped out the email-spreading section, and plugged in the Microsoft exploit. It's possible that several people have access to the Mytob source code - so it may not be the last we see of this Internet scourge.

This Trojan horse has been aggressively seeded, using spam technology, to distribute malicious code to as many vulnerable computers as possible, in the shortest amount of time.

Every month Microsoft releases security patches for its software - and it's often a race against time for companies to roll these patches out across their business before a hacker takes advantage of the vulnerability. A security hole which allows hackers with malicious intentions to run code on Windows or Apple Mac computers is very serious, and all affected users should ensure they have defended their systems.

These emails do not really come from Amazon, and clicking on the attached file will install a malicious Trojan horse on your computer. Once it has slipped under your radar, this Trojan is capable of downloading further malicious code from the internet, giving hackers access to your PC. A real message from Amazon would never contain an attached executable file, and people should always think carefully before running unsolicited code on their computer.

This is the first real virus for the Mac OS X platform. Apple Mac users need to be just as careful running unknown or unsolicited code on their computers as their friends and colleagues running Windows.

This is clearly a growing problem with serious consequences. They are used to deliver spam, Trojan horses, and other malicious code very quickly.