Italian arrested over Trojan horse scheme

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/37/ns-17955.html

Mon, 18 Sep 2000 15:19:28 GMT
Will Knight

Hacking tool is discovered hiding within chat program

An Italian alleged to have concealed a Trojan horse program within a
chat application that was uploaded to a popular downloads Web site has
been arrested by authorities in Milan.

Fraud investigators in Milan said Friday that a 26-year-old Sicilian
had been arrested under an Italian law concerning the distribution of
"malware" following a "virtual pursuit". Investigators warned that the
Trojan horse program had been hidden within a chat program called Chat
1on1 and uploaded to the Web portal Supereva, which belongs to Italian
ISP Dada. The malicious software has since been removed following a
Milanese court order.

The program is believed to allow a malicious user to take control over
a victim's computer system. Italian police suggest that it could have
been used to steal passwords, credit card information and even launch
a distributed denial of service attack. This type of attack bombards a
target with a tidal wave of fake traffic and was used in February to
bring down global Web sites.


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