Troj/Pushdo-Gen

Since the early days of computers there has always been the threat of viruses, spyware, and other risks to your computer system. To this day, that fact hasn’t changed; however, there are several antivirus programs available that keep our computers safe and virus free. Because new threats arise every day, so it's important to be aware and educated about computer viruses.

A family of trojan viruses known as Troj/Pushdo-Gen was first detected in June of 2009 by an anti-virus program called Anti-Vir. Viruses classified as trojans fool your computer into thinking they are legitimate computer programs. Pushdo is classified as a downloader trojan. The program has been designed to disrupt and damage any computer activity. Some trojans are also known as backdoor trojans. A backdoor trojan is a virus that allows other computer users to gain access to a computer through the use of the internet. The purpose of this virus is to download and install additional malicious software to the computer.

The Troj/Pushdo-Gen virus affects computers that have Windows installed on them. Troj/Pushdo-Gen drops a file and then runs the file in the computer's memory. Once the file is on the computer's memory, the virus attaches itself onto other files.

The Troj/Pushdo-Gen virus began spreading through mass spamming. This mass spamming originally occurred on Wednesdays, but has started appearing on other days as well. The master minds behind Troj/Pushdo-Gen use a variety of exploits in order to entice the unsuspecting person to download and execute the Troj/Pushdo-Gen virus files. The most common method to get you to download the unsuspecting file is embedding the file in an email message about celebrities, specifically female celebrities. Then attached to this email is a file. Once you click on and open the file, the Troj/Pushdo-Gen virus has been exposed to the computer and other files on the computer may become corrupt.

Another Troj/Pushdo-Gen ploy that has surfaced and has become a prolific threat has circulated as a fake e-card email. When the attachment is opened, the downloader trojan reports back to the control server. This action allows the Pushdo to keep track of the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the victim, the computer's hard drive serial number, how many times the victim system has executed a Pushdo variant, and the Windows OS version. All of this information may sound useless, but the hard drive serial number is a useful bit of information as it reveals whether or not the code is running on a virtual system or not. This number also allows the malware author to spy on anti-virus companies.

The Troj/Pushdo-Gen is a hard virus to track. It seems that every time one of these mass spammings occurs, the file is always different with no similarities to tie one to the other. With each mass email, a new dummy thread is started in order to evade detection and gain your PC’s information. Therefore, it is important to not open any file if you are not 100% sure of its source.

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