Windows PC owners be warned — there's a new strain of malware out there that befuddles users into helping it accomplish its dirty deeds via mouse clicks.
Dubbed "Trojan Upclicker" by the FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab researchers who identified it, this elusive bit of malicious code is purpose-built to evade identification by the automated analysis systems used by many anti-virus vendors.
FireEye researchers Abhishek Singh and Yasir Khalid noted that Trojan Upclicker is a variant of malware using a newly recognised technique highlighted recently by Symantec.
Once installed on a PC, Trojan Upclicker works by hooking its functionality to a computer mouse. Basically, the code only executes when the mouse's left button is clicked and released, at which point it opens Internet Explorer and injects its payload of nastiness.
What's clever about this approach is that the sandbox environments used by researchers to analyse malware don't incorporate mouse inputs, so Trojan Upclicker and similarly designed viruses remain dormant and undetected in those automated analysis systems.
Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2012/12/17/trojan-upclicker-malware-infecting-pcs-via-mouse-input/
