Anti-virus vendors are warning of the mass mailing of a new Trojan program "Webber" (aka "Heloc" and "Berbew") which is capable of turning infected PCs into pr0n or spam propagating zombies.

Webber is the latest in a series of malicious programs that turn innocent computers into spam machines. It installs a proxy server at the command of malicious attackers. In the last week, Russian AV firm Kaspersky Labs already detected three Trojan programs similar in type to Webber, the most notorious of which was the Magmaf.

"In essence, we have a situation involving the creation of an illegal, extended network that can be exploited by hackers to mass mail spam using the resources of victim computers," commented Eugene Kaspersky, Head of Anti-Virus Research at Kaspersky Labs. "What is most troublesome is that this network can also be abused to achieve virtually any goal, including conducting hacker attacks on a global scale and DDoS attacks on the Web resources of large corporations or government institutions."

[ Read more ]