Antivirus firm issues spyware-threat cure
Published: August 11, 2005
A Florida antivirus company says it has developed a cure for a spyware program that is illegally copying personal information from thousands of computers.
The Sunbelt Software USA team found that the ”Trojan horse” program sent collected data to a remote computer on the Internet. The team tracked down this computer and found it crammed with personal information on thousands of people.
The firm said it contacted the FBI immediately. An FBI spokesman said the bureau does not comment on its ongoing investigations.
Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt, said his company’s software experts discovered the program — which lurks on an infected machine collecting the users’ keystrokes — during routine research. Over time, a user may type in a variety of sensitive information, including credit card, bank account, and Social Security numbers.
”You can see stuff go in that’s very compromising data,” Eckelberry said.
Eckelberry said his researchers have added a feature to his company’s antivirus program that will clean computers infected by the Trojan.
In addition, Sunbelt plans to issue a free stand-alone program today that targets this specific infection. The free software will be available at sunbelt-software.com. Eckelberry also said Sunbelt has shared its research with other antivirus software makers, who should also offer updates to their software in the next few days.
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