Trojan masquerades as leaked MSN Messenger 8

F-Secure is warning that instant messages claiming that "Messenger 8 BETA has been leaked!" and offer a download are really Trojans containing the Virkel.f virus. "Virkel.f adds the compromised machine to a botnet," says Personal Tech Pipeline, "from which the hacker can update the Trojan with additional malicious code, to make the PC into a spam zombie or along with others, launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on Web sites. Virkel.f also shuts down anti-virus and security software, and blocks access to sites that belong to security vendors." It spreads by sending itself to everyone on infected machines' buddy lists.

Tags: msn messenger, trojan, virus, windows live messenger