Pop-up program reads keystrokes, steals passwords

SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
edited June 2004 in Science & Tech
A malicious program that installs itself through a pop-up can read keystrokes and steal passwords when victims visit any of nearly 50 targeted banking sites, security researchers warned on Tuesday. The malicious program is reportedly able to gain access to your computer through Internet Explorer.
"If (the program) recognizes that you are on one of those sites, it does keystroke logging," said Sachs, director of the Internet Storm Center, a site that monitors network threats. Even though all financial sites use encryption built into the browser to protect log-in data, the Trojan horse program can capture the information before it gets encrypted by the browser software. "The browser does not encrypt data between your keyboard and computer. It's encrypting it (when it goes) out onto the Web."
Source: News.com

Comments

  • TemplarTemplar You first.
    edited June 2004
    I'm surprised I haven't heard something like this before.
  • dodododo Landisville, PA
    edited June 2004
    does this only affect IE?
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited June 2004
    dodo wrote:
    does this only affect IE?

    Yes
  • dodododo Landisville, PA
    edited June 2004
    interesting.....
    While the latest program is installed on Windows computers using a known vulnerability, the helper file hack exploits a feature, not a flaw, and could work with most major browsers, Sachs said.

    Firefox still is better.
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