New trend: Trojan which steals your pics instead of your text

That private stash of, ah, special-interest jpgs? Lifted

Miscreants have developed a strain of malware that steals image files from compromised systems.

The Pixsteal-A Trojan dispenses with the conventional tactic of only stealing text files, instead concentrating on uploading .jpg, .jpeg, and .dmp (memory dump) files from infected machines onto a remote FTP server.

The switch in tactics reflects the changing way that users store potentially sensitive information, an advisory by Trend Micro explains.

"Information theft routines have been mostly limited to information that is in text form, thus this malware poses a whole new different risk for users," writes Raymart Paraiso, a threat response engineer at Trend Micro. "Users typically rely on photos for storing information, both personal and work-related, so the risk of information leakage is very high. Collected photos can be used for identity theft, blackmail, or can even be used in future targeted attacks." ®