PinkStats

PinkStats is a backdoor Trojan and a Trojan downloader that recently was confirmed to have an attack campaign extending back at least as far as 2009 – if not further than that. As a Chinese-origin PC threat, PinkStats is most significant to neighboring Asian countries, and other experts in the malware industry already have managed to verify over one thousand separate PinkStats-infected PCs in South Korea alone. PinkStats conceals itself as a fake Web analytic tool, but SpywareRemove.com malware analysts warn that any other malware installed by PinkStats may not be especially visible during their attacks – and that PinkStats' interface is not visible by default during normal PC usage, in any case. Deleting PinkStats, like any high-level threat to your computer's security, should use suitable anti-malware tools when they're available for ensuring that all malicious software associated with PinkStats, as well as all of PinkStats traces, are removed completely.

PinkStats Should Be Leaving You Pink with Outrage at Your Security Problems

As a backdoor Trojan, one might expect PinkStats to be installed and kept running as a clandestine, effectively invisible application – but PinkStats uses another form of stealth entirely. By hiding its contact with its C&C server as a Web analytics-based communication, PinkStats hopes to convince anyone casually inspecting its functions into believing that PinkStats is a benign program. Earlier versions of PinkStats also had a predominantly pink background for their fake Web analytics window, wherein PinkStats derived its informal name. PinkStats's real goal is to disable your PC's security and enable the installation of other forms of malicious software.

SpywareRemove.com malware experts have highlighted the following PinkStats-based attacks as major security risks:

• PinkStats often uses Zxarp, a benign but frequently exploited tool, to accomplish Man-in-the-Middle style attacks against your browser. These attacks may be used to distribute PinkStats through any local networks (via well-disguised ARP-poisoning attacks), intercept confidential information or modify the content of a Web page as it's being loaded. Such MitM attacks often are a trademark of banking Trojans, which use them to steal bank account information.
• PinkStats also has been found to be devoted primarily to downloading and installing other PC threats automatically. For example, PinkStats may install a Distributed-Denial-of-Service or DDoS tool that can use your computer's resource to simulate floods of traffic that crash targeted websites.

Shutting Down PinkStats's Fake Bean Counter Operation

Based on one of its known distribution methods, PinkStats should especially be prevented from spreading through shared networks between multiple computers. SpywareRemove.com malware researchers also warn that most PC threats distributed via networks also are capable of supplementing that distribution with a secondary technique, such as infecting USB drives or utilizing harvested e-mail addresses for targeted e-mail attacks. If you isolate a PC compromised by PinkStats and use anti-malware tools as they're needed to remove PinkStats, you should be able to keep the possibility of spreading PinkStats to new computers to a minimum.

Remember that PinkStats's main goal is to install specialized malware besides itself. The longer you wait before attending to a potential PinkStats attack, the likelier it is that your computer will suffer from a range of other ill effects that are probable compromises of your PC's privacy and security. Currently, SpywareRemove.com malware analysts note that all forms of secondary PC threats installed by PinkStats are signed with fake Microsoft digital signatures – a typical form of misdirection that shouldn't fool most decent anti-malware scanners.