Malware Leaves Printers Inundated with Print Jobs

Malware Leaves Printers Inundated with Print Jobs

According to Symantec, an outbreak of Trojan.Milicenso had resulted in printer servers being inundated with print jobs. The affected printers printed garbage characters until they ran out of paper. The malware first surfaced in 2010 and has been making a comeback over the past two weeks.

According to telemetry data obtained by Symantec, the regions most affected by this malware were the United States and India, followed by regions in Europe and South America. Symantec said that their initial inspection in 2010 revealed that Trojan.Milicenso operated as a "malware delivery vehicle for hire" but the latest iteration is associated with Adware.Eorezo which is an adware that targets French speaking users.

The current version of Trojan.Milicenso infects systems through means including malicious email attachments or by malicious scripts that are executed by infected webpages. Symantec said that unsuspecting users are typically guided to these websites when they click links in an unsolicited email. Furthermore, they have also found that a large number of samples are being packaged as a fake CODEC.

As a note of interest, the malware's primary goal is to generate bogus ad clicks by serving up advertisements and its unintended side effect of sending continuous print jobs to print servers, results in wasted ink and paper.

Symantec advises all users follow best security practices and keep their anti-virus programs updated with the latest definitions in order to safeguard themselves from this malware that is a dream come true for your office paper supplier.

(Source: Symantec)