Two weeks back we reported that Security firm Trend Micro discovered a worm targeting Skype users with spam messages designed to infect machines with the Dorkbot ransomware has been discovered. This malware is spreading through a question/ phrase sent to the users by someone and the question is: "lol is this your new profile pic?"
Yesterday Security researchers from Avast have intercepted a currently spreading Darkbot malware campaign, that's affecting millions of Skype users. According to him," It targets all the major Web browsers, and is also capable of distributing related malware such as Ransomware/LockScreen, as well as steal accounting data for major social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter, as well as related services such as GoDaddy, PayPal and Netflix."
Some of the infected PCs install the malware known as ransomeware which locks your PC and ask you to pay $200 dollars within 48 hours to retrieve your files.
"If you click on the link, your infected computer becomes part of a botnet, or a network of computers controlled by hackers to execute DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. A DDoS attack causes the site or service to be temporarily unavailable by flooding the targeted website with traffic until the site's servers are overloaded."
Initially only 2 of the present 44 antivirus engines identified the threat, but currently the number has increased to 27, which is still quite low. However, it also indicates that about 1 Million users must have clicked o the links and greeted infection on the links.
Users are advised to ensure that they're running the latest version of their third-party software, browser plugins, ensure that the URL they're about to click on hasn't already been flagged as malicious, and take advantage of application sandboxing techniques to avoid direct exploitation of their host.
