Phishing using Codec Downloads

Phishers seem to be increasingly using social engineering techniques to infect victims. The most common case is posting a link in a social networking site or forum which points to an "interesting resource". Users click this link and land on a web page which claims that they need to download a codec or something similar, before they can access the "interesting resource". Once a gullible user downloads and executes the supposed codec, the trojan infects the user's system and makes it part of a botnet or something similar.

The video below is a demo from Webroot Threat Blog about such an attack on gaming forums.

Vivek Ramachandran is a security evangelist and has been working in computer security related fields for the past 7 years. In 2007, Vivek spoke at world renowned conferences Defcon (WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon (The Caffe Latte Attack). The discovery of the Caffe Latte Attack was covered by CBS5 news, BBC online, Network World etc news agencies.In 2006, Vivek was announced as one of winners of the Microsoft Security Shootout contest held in India among 65,000 participants. He has also been a recipient of a Team Achievement at Cisco Systems for his work on 802.1x and Port Security modules on the Catalyst 6500 switches. Currently he spends all of his time maintaining Security- Freak.Net , SecurityTube.Net and is the co-founder of Axonize. Vivek, is a Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.You can contact him at vivek[at]securitytube.net