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    Virus hides in lesbian pop duo

Malware writers use the launch of new Tatu album to recruit more PCs to botnet and harvest information

By Iain Thomson, 20 Oct 2006 at 12:26

Malware writers are becoming increasingly attuned to the commercial world, as the spamming of a Trojan about Russian faux lesbian band Tatu shows.

The emails began circulating last night and have been heavily spammed to coincide with the band releasing a 'best of' album. The email includes a zipped file containing pictures of the band but also include a Trojan program called Banito that allows remote code execution and includes a keylogger.

"Ken points out that TATU's media blitz is continuing," the email reads.

"They're gonna be big, they are. The in-depth report includes such tidbits as Julia says: "We really love each other and the sex is phenomenal. s a thousand times better than with a man. And contrary to what others might say, we don't just talk about it. We have sex at least three times a day......"

The malware writers have taken the unusual step of using a .CHM executable to hide the Trojan. With most companies now blocking common executable code in email it is thought that the writers are diversifying to more unused formats.

"I think this campaign is about both information theft and botnets," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"You might think that there's be little value in data from teenagers but I'll bet there are a fair few forty year old men who'd be clicking the files as well."

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