Topic: New spyware captures XP desktop screenshots. (Read 1605 times)

xolik · « **on:** April 06, 2004, 06:08:59 PM »

Just a heads up, guys and gals. If you've got a Windows\System32\Data or Winnt\System\Data directory, take a look and see if there are any .jpg files with dates as names on them. Here is a cut-and-paste from the article describing it:

Quote

WinXPNews.com (article about halfway down)

Spyware Photographs Your Windows XP Desktop

We received a very disturbing letter from a WinXPnews reader last week:

"I was cleaning out the "unerase files" that Norton Anti-Virus holds when I happened to look through them. I found a number of jpg files in the list. They were named something like "2003-7-2_1-5-45.jpg," a record of a date and time. I traced the folder to WINDOWS\system32\data. In it were more files like this. One was created EXACTLY every five minutes. They also have a thumbnail version. When I viewed them, I was shocked. There was a perfect screenshot of my computer at that time! What if I have credit card numbers or a private email on the screen at that time? Anyone with the right hack could find these files and exploit them! Is this something that Microsoft is doing to keep an eye out? My virus software can find nothing. Please, let the readers know if it is a security issue."

Looks like someone installed a very malicious spyware program on this user's computer. These kinds of screen capture spy applications are very effective for capturing credit card information, user names, document and file system data, and email reconnaissance information. There's a good chance that the program is sending these screen shots to someone "out there" for review. That's why it's so important to have a good spyware and scumware blocking application. It doesn't matter which one you use, just use one!

It won't be detected by NAV or McAfee, so you'll need to search for it manually. I'm sure most of you already use some type of "ad-aware" like software so you should be ok.

Telsan · « **Reply #1 on:** April 07, 2004, 06:52:59 AM »

Why doesnt this surprise me. Hopefully Zonealarm, TC monitor ( a registry monitor), aswell as two ad searching programs and a daily virus scanner will keep me safe.

Always remember freaking out when ZoneAlarm showed me how many non internet applications request access.

Anonymous · « **Reply #2 on:** April 20, 2004, 09:29:55 PM »

Speaking of spyware and adware, within about 5 seconds the other night, I had like 3 programs that installed themselves thanks to me using Internet Explorer. I wasn't even able to make a ghost image of my fresh install before something like that happened. Thank goodness for Spy Bot Search and Destroy and Ad Aware - they were able to fix the problem after one restart.

I reccomend Opera to stop many instances of adware making it on to your computer. I know, many have said it here before, but I finally got fed up with all of the popups and crap that comes along with IE.

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Author Topic: New spyware captures XP desktop screenshots. (Read 1605 times)

xolik

New spyware captures XP desktop screenshots.

Telsan

New spyware captures XP desktop screenshots.

Anonymous

New spyware captures XP desktop screenshots.