Olympics Offer Path For Storm Trojan

The Storm Trojan is back again, this time in a link from an e-mail stating the Olympics have been delayed or canceled due to the Chinese earthquakes.

The Storm Trojan, one of the most successful of the last few years, had seemed to fall into abeyance. But now it’s back with a vengeance, spread through a link in an e-mail claiming the Olympics will be delayed or canceled because of the May earthquake in China. The link, beijing.exe, says it contains full details, but actually unleashes the Trojan.

The attack has been identified by Symantec and the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which has already issued an alert about the e-mails. Now there are worries that this could just be a prelude for a larger attack that coincides with the Olympic Games.

Patrik Runald, security researcher at F-Secure, told Vnunet:

“The first time we saw Storm was when they sent out e-mails that reported violent storms going through Europe — that’s why we named it Storm. At the time there were actually storms going through Europe. The earthquake in Beijing has fortunately not happened. Speaking of Beijing and Storm, we are still expecting to see Storm, and other malware, use the Olympic Games in August as a social engineering trick so be on the lookout for those in a few weeks.”