Symantec: Phel Trojan Horse Attacks Windows XP

KingFishKingFish
edited February 2005 in Science & Tech
Security firm Symantec is warning users of a newly discovered Trojan horse named Phel--an anagram of the word help--that attacks Windows XP. The Trojan horse is capable of remotely controlling a user's system even if the latest Windows XP service pack, SP2, has been installed.
The Trojan horse, distributed as an HTML file, attempts to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer's HTML Help Control component in all versions of Windows. The vulnerability was discovered in October.

Microsoft is actively investigating new public reports of a criminal attack, according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

For the exploit to succeed, an attacker would need to entice a user to visit a malicious Web site and then place the Trojan horse on the user's machine. If the Trojan horse executes successfully, potentially malicious software could be downloaded and run on the user's system, the spokesperson says.

Microsoft is working to forensically analyze the malicious code in Phel, and will work with law enforcement agencies to identify and bring to justice those responsible for the malicious activity, he says.
Source: PC World

Comments

  • cori36830cori36830
    edited February 2005
    Hi, My computer has been infected by the trojan virus and regardless of updating my antivirus program and spyware program, I cannot get rid of this thing. It constantly changes my homepage settings and will not allow me to go to certain websites. Is there anything left for me to do?
Sign In or Register to comment.