Outbreak Name: Kukudro-A*

Outbreak Date: 6-27-06

Dangerous Trojan Uses Word Document to Spread Outbreak Filters Protects Users 3 hours and 38 minutes Before First AV Signature

Background

IronPort's Virus Outbreak Filters protects customers within the critical period between the first exploit of a virus outbreak and the release of an AV signature. During the recent Kukudro variant outbreak, Outbreak Filters protected customers 3 hours and 38 minutes before traditional AV vendors** provided protection.

Potential Damage from Outbreak

Kukudro-A is a dangerous Trojan that was recently spammed out to hundreds of thousands of email addresses and contained the subject line of "worth to see", "prices", "Hi", or "Hello". Alarmingly, the virus is contained in a seemingly benign zipped Microsoft Word document and will therefore bypass almost all attachment filters. If the document is opened the virus exploits a Microsoft Word vulnerability to install itself. Once installed, the virus opens a backdoor that remote hackers can use to take over the computer. Once taken over, hackers can use the computer to send spam and host spyware. Remote hackers can also install key loggers and screen scrapers onto the infected PC to steal personal, confidential and financial information without the user's knowledge.

Timeline

* As named by Sophos.
** Calculated as publicly published signatures from the following vendors: Sophos, Trend Micro, Computer Associates, F-Secure, Symantec and McAfee. If signature time is not available, first publicly published alert time is used.