Panda Security: A new wave of Trojans threatens the security of online Lineage players
November 2007 by Panda
PandaLabs has detected the appearance of four new variants of the Lineage Trojan over the last two days. These new variants are Lineage.GNH, Lineage.GNE, Lineage.GMT and Lineage.GMZ and are designed to steal passwords for the Lineage online game.
These Trojans have been distributed solely for financial gain. They steal passwords and allow hackers to access players’ accounts and steal their assets (obtained by advancing through the different levels of the game). Then they auction them on the Internet. Surprising as it may seem, this is a highly profitable business as some people are willing to pay large sums of money for these objects.
“Cyber-crooks create different variants of a malicious code in a very short period of time to bypass security solutions. Solutions based on signature files exclusively (which store vaccines for malware that has already been identified) don’t protect against waves of unknown variants. Therefore it is advisable to have solutions that incorporate proactive technologies capable of detecting unknown threats”, explains Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.
This type of Trojan spreads through email, infected P2P downloads, etc., but cannot spread through their own means. That is, they need the targeted user to take some actions to enter computers. PandaLabs advised users not to click links or run files received from unreliable sources.