Spyware Reaches New and Frightening Level of Sophistication

Spyware technology takes a major step forward this week humiliating Windows XP users everywhere.

A new class known as Deviant-X-CamSpawner, or Dev-X is believed to infect more than 125,000 machines worldwide and is spreading at a rate of 12,000 / day. It propagates itself by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer then sits dormant scanning users surfing habits.

Dev-X kicks into action when someone visits sites with pornographic content, then tries to detect a webcam attached to the users PC.

If found it is activated and spawns a Real Media compatible webcam server on Port 80. It then uses an embedded SMTP server to distribute an email to everyone in the users Microsoft Outlook address book.

The email includes subject, “Hey [Name] I have a surprise for you”.

The email content will vary to avoid being trapped by spam filters, but one variant is;

“I know we don’t talk much about personal stuff, but I wanted to let you know that when I’m alone at my computer, I’m usually thinking about you. This is too personal for me to discuss face to face, and I’d rather you didn’t bring it up next time we see each other, but I REALLY want you to see what I get up to when you are on my mind! I think you’ll be pleased. I’ve set up a webcam for you to watch.”

http://IP_ADDRESS/dev-x-server.rm

When the unsuspecting recipient of the email clicks the link they are treated to either a live show if it’s still in progress, or served an archive of the event that Dev-X has spawned to disk.

Picture quality varies depending on bandwidth and webcam quality, but users with a good connection also receive an audio stream of the Divinyls one hit wonder “When I think of You I Touch Myself”, whose haunting chorus:

I don't want anybody else
When I think about you
I touch myself
Oh I don't want anybody else
oh no
oh no
oh no

brings a crescendo of horror as the viewers world comes crashing down around them.

A spokesman for “Real Media” told reporters, “This is a disgrace. Someone out there has without license distributed a Real compatible media server that not only works flawlessly, it also manages to operate over Port 80, navigate through firewalls, stream to disk and auto-feed archive footage. We are absolutely appalled because we have not managed to achieve this ourselves yet. We hope that this villain is brought to justice, so their identity is revealed and we get the chance to start them at £150,000 / year + benefits.”

14th August 2004

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