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March 05, 2008
MonaRonaDona virus: in league with tricky devils
We've probably all speculated at times about whether there might be an unholy alliance between the people who write malware, and those who make their living writing the code that identifies and removes it. It seems that we were right ... at least in the case of the MonaRonaDona virus.
It stands out as a weirdly unique extrovert among the furtive fraternity of software that delivers its malevolent payload by stealth. Once it gains entry, MonaRonaDona sends up flares and balloons, greeting its unwitting host with a pop-up message that declares:
"Hi, My name is MonaRonaDona. I'm a virus and I am here to Wreck Your PC. If you observe strange behaviour with your PC, like program windows disappearing etc., it's me who is doing all this. I was created as a protest against the Human Rights Violation that is being observed throughout the world & the very purpose of my existence is to remind & stress the world to respect humanity."Sure enough, once you see the message, your computer does seem to exhibit strange behaviour, such as programs closing. In fact, it appears the very purpose of MonaRonaDona is to sell an anti-virus package called UniGray Antivirus that seems curiously tailored to cope with this one particular virus, once you hand over your $US39.90.
Rather than rewarding these scammers, this thread on the DSL Reports security forum includes a comparatively simple fix.
The Kaspersky Labs Viruslist blog has a fascinating analysis of the scam, which attempts to cash in on the likelihood that victims will immediately enter "MonaRonaDona" into a Google search box, and come up with sites like this, which point them to UniGray AntiVirus.
Posted by cw at March 5, 2008 09:33 AM
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