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Not the much publicised Conficker, nor the Easter Twitter Worm were affecting Irish computers most, but a Trojan! Our friends at Eset have reported that while on a global scale Conficker was the most prevalent recent infection, with it being detected on nearly one in ten computers
(especially rampant in Russia and Ukraine where it was detected in almost one in three computers), in Ireland it is a Trojan, officially labelled WMA/TrojanDownloader.GetCodec that is doing most of the infecting. Latest figures show that in Ireland it featured in approximately 6.5% of all virus detections (while globally it ranked fifth on ESET’s threat list with 1.45% of detections).
Win32/GetCodec.A is a type of malware that modifies media files. This Trojan converts all media files found on a computer to the WMA format and adds a field to the header that includes a URL pointing the user to a new codec, claiming that the codec has to be downloaded so that the media files can be read. WMA/TrojanDownloader.GetCodec.Gen is a downloader closely related to Wimad.N which facilitates infection by GetCodec variants like Win32/GetCodec.A
ESET is therefore warning Irish computer users to exercise great caution if their computers ask them to download a codec needed to open a media file (especially if previously they didn't need that codec for that specific file), as it may well be the Trojan in action. |
