Posted on September 6, 2005

Arabic Trojan Butts Into Porn Surfing

Robert Jaques, IT Week, Sept. 5

Security experts today issued a warning after detecting a malicious Trojan horse which tries to interrupt the surfing of adult websites by displaying messages from the Koran.

The Yusufali-A Trojan monitors users’ surfing habits by examining the title bar of the active window.

If the Trojan finds a key word such as ‘teen’, ‘xx’, ‘sex’ or ‘penis’, it minimises the window so that the user cannot see its content and displays a message from the Koran instead.

The message, which is partly written in Arabic, contains the following English text: “Yusufali: Know, therefore, that there is no god but Allah, and ask forgiveness for thy fault, and for the men and women who believe: for Allah knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes.”

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: “Unlike other malware, it appears that this Trojan isn’t trying to steal money or confidential information, but acts as a moral guardian instead, blocking the viewing of websites it determines as unsavoury.

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