14 DAY TRIAL // The file sharing applications are used in almost every country of the world and, even if they're not totally legal, their popularity is continuously increasing. The main reason for not being legal is that peer-to-peer file sharing tools use to distribute videos, games or music that is usually copyrighted by a company and must receive money for it. One of the most well known file sharing programs is surely the Japanese Winny that started a lot of controversial discussions after its creator Isamu Kaneko was convicted by a Japanese court for encouraging the use of pirated services.
Today, security company Sophos discovered a weird Trojan file that is downloadable through the file-sharing application and is not really infecting the computers but it continues to harm the user. It acts like a screensaver, displaying images and text messages, encouraging the user to avoid Winny or he might get the hard-disks deleted or even become a police suspect.
"Programs, music files and email mailboxes are amongst the files targeted by the Trojan horse. EXE, BAT, CMD, INI, ASP, HTM, HTML, PHP, CLASS, JAVA, DBX, EML, MBX, TBB, WAB, HLP, TXT, MP3, XLS, LOG, BMP files are all overwritten by images contained inside the malicious code of comic book character Ayu Tsukimiya. One of the images (which sings a song about fish-shaped pancakes filled with bean jam) includes a phone number, although it is possible that this does not belong to the malware author," the security company Sophos reported in an advisory.
Although it is not quite a dangerous Trojan file, Troj/Pirlames-A fights against the file-sharing applications and encourages network providers to restrict the access to certain service provided by their ISP.