The world’s most sophisticated Trojan uncovered

Security experts have discovered new spambot software that installs its own anti-virus scanner to eliminate competition, alongside a number of other sophisticated features.
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“SpamThru is a money-making operation, and the author takes great care to make sure that detection by the major vendors is avoided by frequently updating the code,” said SecureWorks’ Joe Stewart in the company’s analysis.
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“The complexity and scope of the project rivals some commercial software,” he wrote. “Clearly the spammers have made quite an investment in infrastructure in order to maintain their level of income.” The company has come across previous Trojans that attempt to switch off other malware, in order to maximise system resources, but SpamThru installs a pirated version of Kaspersky AntiVirus for WinGate, customised to skip files known to be part of SpamThru itself, naturally.