Web users in Iran and Syria aiming to circumvent censorship controls are being targeted with spyware, according to security researchers.
A team at the University of Toronto said installation software for the popular proxy tool Simurgh also implanted keylogging spyware.
Simurgh is designed to anonymise net use and allow access to blocked sites.
However, an added Trojan is said to send data from victims‘ PCs to a site registered with a Saudi Arabian ISP.
This can include the computer operator’s username and machine name, as well as every window clicked and every keystroke entered.
The developers of Simurgh subsequently posted a warning on their website noting that versions of their software installer downloaded from the file sharing service 4shared had been compromised.
Anti-virus firms Sophos and Avira have also updated their malware scanners to detect the code. (more on bbc.co.uk)
