This section provides a quick introduction of what is PWS (Password Stealer) Trojan, a malware that monitors your keystokes, captures personal information such as user names and passwords, and send this information to the malware originator.
PWS (Password Stealer): A malware that monitors your keystokes, captures personal information
such as user names and passwords, and send this information to the malware originator.
A McAfee reports shows that as of year 2006, there were about 12000 PWSs known on the Internet.
About 62% of them were designed to target financial institution accesses, see the list below:
Banks and e-commerce - PWS-Banker, PWS-Goldun, etc.: 62%
Online Games - PWS-Lineage, PWS-Legmir, PWS-WoW, etc.: 18%
IM, Social Networking - PWS-LDPinch, PWS-QQPass, etc.: 10%
Others: 10%
Most of PWS Trojans come from China, followed by Brazil and Russia. Here is a list of
top 5 countries where PWS generic.y Trojan originated:
China 533
Brazil 66
Russian Federation 45
Germany 12
Switzerland 7
Read the other sections in this chapter to see a real example of PWS Trojans.
