Office® 2010 Beta Impersonator is Trojan

Just a week after I wrote the alert on the fake Windows® 7 compatibility checker, another interesting e-mail came into my Inbox. The subject? “See Office 2010 Beta in action”.

Fig 1. The sham Office® 2010 Beta announcement

This enticing title accompanies a message which reveals to the user what is new in this Office® version. Rated by members with 5 stars (out of 5, of course), this Beta version appears too hot not to be tested. It’s like … a must. To save the users’ time and get them down to this ardent matter as soon as possible, the promised beta version is attached to the message as a zip file. Quite suspicious, isn’t it?

When extracting it, the attachment reveals me an exe file baptized under a baffling string of letters and figures, much in the style of a product key. This name is actually the product key users must input in order to activate the beta product.

However, a detailed file check exposes the fake beta as malware.

 Fig. The Beta impersonating Trojan

Identified by BitDefender as Trojan.Downloader.Delf.RUJ, this piece of malwareaffects the Windows platform.  It is designed to infiltrate the user’s computer and open a conduit by which large amounts of adware and spyware can be piped into the affected system, therefore generating loads of popup adverts. Once installed, the Trojan creates a copy of itself into the and the registry is modified to run the respective copy at each Windows startup. Then, it attempts to connect to a specific IP address to download different malicious files. Trojan.Downloader.Delf.RUJis also a very dangerous threat to personal and financial data. 

In order to stay safe, never open attachments without scanning them first. Install and update a complete antimalware software solutionand, if you want to test software, make sure you download it from the official vendor’s website.

All product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.