11 Feb 1999
The Internet's best-known security team has warned of an increase in the use of Trojan horse programs to steal information from unwary users.
The Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) said last week that hackers were targeting users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and the Linux operating system.
A Trojan horse is a program that contains hidden code allowing an outsider to assume user privileges and steal passwords and files.
Cert said it had received reports of the wide distribution of an email claiming to offer a free upgrade of IE, but which in fact modifies a user's system and attempts to contact another system.
The group warned that a Trojan horse was placed in 'util-linux', which includes several essential utilities for Linux.
The program will send out an email containing the host name, and ID of users logging in.
Cert said that code was changed on at least one server, and that the Trojan horse could have been sent to mirror sites.
Cert warned last month that some copies of the source code for Unix TCP Wrappers were modified to contain a Trojan horse.
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