'Porn browser' serves up malicious software
A Web browser that promises to help the user surf to explicit Web sites bundles malicious software, a researcher has warned.
"It comes with its very own rootkit," Chris Boyd, director of research at FaceTime Communications wrote on his blog Wednesday.
The program, called NetBrowserPro, is advertised in poor English on a Web site as a tool with a purpose: "NetBrowserPro is the internet browser which aimed to the one thing--help you to watch porn. Secure, confidential, quick and free."
When installing NetBrowserPro a rootkit gets dropped on the PC, Boyd found. A rootkit could provide a cloak for cybercrooks. Also, the browser asks to install an application called MovieCommander which, according to Boyd, is associated with fake codecs that are known to install spyware on computers.
Furthermore, the installer is asked to allow all kinds of updates to the PC, without any notification, which could provide another avenue for malicious code.
"I'd advise end users not to install and run this program," Boyd wrote. If the security risk isn't deterrent enough, the content that the browser displays after installation might be. "The fact that an initial reaction to these images was 'how old?' is never a particularly good indicator of the overall content of those sites," Boyd wrote.
NetBrowserPro is only the latest attempt to get people to install an apparently malicious program. Yapbrowser redirected to illegal porn, Safety Browser arrived with an IM worm and Browsezilla only served to push up the hit counters of various adult Web sites.
