The author of a free Trojan horse program favored by amateur computer intruders found himself with some explaining to do to the underground last month, after his users discovered he'd slipped a secret backdoor password into his popular malware, potentially allowing him to re-hack compromised hosts.

The program in question is Optix Pro (Backdoor.OptixPro.12), a full-featured backdoor that allows an intruder to easily control a compromised Windows machine remotely, from accessing or changing files, to capturing a user's keystrokes or spying on a victim through their webcam. Though some features could make Optix Pro usable as a legitimate remote management tool, others are clearly tailored to the underground, including a function that disables a machine's anti-virus and firewall software. The program has been downloaded nearly 270,000 times, according to a counter on the distribution site.

By Kevin Poulsen at The Register.

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