Trojan-Rigged Software Keygens Aggressively Distributed in January

[Jack]

Serial key generators carrying trojans have made it to the number two spot in BitDefender's malware detection statistics for January, suggesting that this infection vector was aggressively used last month.

Trojan.Crack.I accounted for 5.82% of all detections seen by BitDefender last month and was only surpassed by a generic signature for AutoRun malware.

"This application is a keygen, a binary file designed to defeat the commercial protection of shareware software products by generating false registration keys.
Its emergence on the second place is an indicator of the fact that the worldwide software landscape is affected by piracy and the subsequent threats posed by this practice" the BitDefender security researchers said.

The keygen appears harmless, but it actually has trojan attached which steals registration information for other applications and games installed on the systems.

Source


BitDefender Top 10 E-Threats in January 2011:

1. Trojan.AutorunINF.Gen - 7.40%
   
2. Trojan.Crack.I - 5.82%
   
3. Win32.Worm.Downadup.Gen - 5.78%
   
4. Gen:Variant.Adware.Hotbar.2 - 4.26%
   
5. Java.Trojan.Downloader.OpenConnection.AI - 3.56%
   
6. Win32.Sality.OG - 2.24%
   
7. Gen:Variant.Adware.Hotbar.1 - 2.23%
   
8. Exploit.CplLnk.Gen - 2.19%
   
9. Win32.Sality.3 - 2.00%
   
10. Win32.Worm.DownadupJob.A - 1.92%

 

[bogdan]

Unfortunately warez users will often ignore antivirus prompts regarding keygens/cracks and consider them false positives for reasons unknown to me.