The company takes aim at the ubiquitous SpyEye banking trojan with its free Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), saying that the malware is more common than ever, and is being used to grab data from sensitive online sessions.
In a blog post on Wednesday on the company’s Malware Protection Center Threat Research and Response Blog, Microsoft said that SpyEye was one of two families of malware which have had their signatures added to the MSRT. The Other is Poison, aka PoisonIvy, a backdoor Trojan from the old school that’s been circulating since at least 2006.
Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool is a free tool that checks systems running supported versions of the Windows operating system for signs of infection by prevalent malicious software. Microsoft updates the tool with new detections each month and a version of it is distributed via the Microsoft Update and Windows Update services – screening systems for infections before installing updated operating system and application patches.
First released in January, 2005, and now includes detections for 165 different families of malicious software. The company compiles data from MSRT scans and uses it to inform its periodic S infections detected by MSRT in its Security Intelligence Reports. Its most recent report, released this week, suggested that concern about so-called “zero day” – or previously unknown vulnerabilities – may be overstated. Less than one percent of infections detected by MSRT were linked to zero day holes, the company said.
