Serious virus risks from downloading internet porn images

by a reader on 30 April 2009
a reader's picture

Here's another very useful contribution from Alan, offering his IT expertise to warn about the security risks of downloading porn images:

  1. Trojan horse infections are now reaching plague proportions on the internet, and they pose a MUCH greater threat than most viruses and internet worm infections.
  2. My experience shows that out of every 100 porn (JPG or JPEG) images downloaded from any site you will find at least 2 trojans hidden amongst these files.
  3. The risks of infection are serious. I'm not trying to scaremonger - I just state the facts as I see them. Not all antivirus programs or Malware software (even SpyBot Search & Destroy) will detect these infections.
  4. These trojans are extremely cleverly hidden and even if you scan a folder with 100 JPEGs you won't spot infections. I'm not sure how the creators have done this but the infected files appear just like a normal image. You can even open the image but an executable program is hidden behind or inside of the image.
  5. The very nature of trojan horse infections makes them very hard to detect. You could have many trojan infections on your computer without being able to see them. You would only perhaps detect that your machine was running slowly or behaving a little oddly. Trojans can not only cloak themselves completely, but also disable your antivirus and other security software. Some can even disable your firewall too.
  6. Trojans horse infections come in several forms: a) Keyloggers literally recording your behaviour from the key stokes you make. b) Data theft i.e. credit cards, passwords, address book details etc. c) Back Door BOTs designed to drop robots into the machine so it can be controlled remotely by a super user or hacker.

There are tools that can accurately detect trojans and help remove them. Here are some suggestions to help you (please note that I am not affiliated with these products):

a) Trojan Hunter (this is a licensed product rated possibly the best of its kind) You can download a fully working 30 day free trial of the software at http://www.misec.net/trojanhunter/

b) Trend Micro's (free) program called "Hi Jack This" which needs to be used with care and expert guidance from the online forums (as the report created might involve editing the windows registry which needs to be done with care).

http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis

Thank you Alan! Yet more good reasons to quit downloading internet porn.

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Alan's picture

I forgot to also say that

Submitted by Alan on Fri, 01/05/2009 - 00:07

I forgot to also say that apart from the silent or stealth installation of Trojan Horse infections via downloading of adult images (normally JPG or JPEG's but not specifically limited to this image type). These Trojans get downloaded via your web browser, they often get into your machine via the browsers web cache so clearing down the browser cache can help prevent some infections but not all.

NOTE:- Apart from the passive mode Trojans there is a second kind of Trojan Horse infection that can be extremely aggressive, it can and will inject itself into your computer so fast you either won't see it happen or wont be able to prevent system penetration. These highly aggressive Trojans get through an open port 80 ( port 80 is the one used for web browser and is associated with HTTP). Most AV software cannot prevent the more aggressive injector Trojans.

**The Good news is that on the whole Trojans don't replicate themselves like viruses or worms.

**The bad news is Trojans are definitely amongst the most challenging parasites to safely & fully remove (clean off).

Regards Alan

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