Skype worm spreads, using LOL trick to infect unwary users

Skype users are warned to be on their guard, regarding malicious instant messages that have been sent through the service, designed to infect Windows computers.

A malicious worm is taking advantage of the Skype API to spam out messages similar to the one below:

lol is this your new profile pic? http://goo.gl/[REDACTED]?img=[USERNAME]

Clicking on the suspicious links leads to the download of a ZIP files (variously called skype_06102012_image.zip or skype_08102012_image.zip) that contains executable files detected by Sophos anti-virus products as Troj/Agent-YCW or Troj/Agent-YDC.

The Trojan horse opens a backdoor, allowing a remote hacker to take control of infected PCs, communicating with a remote server via HTTP.

On execution the malware copies itself to

%PROFILE%Application DataJqfsfb.exe

and sets the autostart entry as below…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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