Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB

Posted: October 10, 2013

Threat Metric

The Threat Meter is a malware assessment that SpywareRemove.com's research team is able to give every identifiable malware threat. Our Threat Meter includes several criteria based off of specific malware threats to value their severity, reach and volume. The Threat Meter is able to give you a numerical breakdown of each threat's initial Threat Level, Detection Count, Volume Count, Trend Path and Percentage Impact. The overall ranking of each threat in the Threat Meter is a basic breakdown of how all threats are ranked within our own extensive malware database. The scoring for each specific malware threat can be easily compared to other emerging threats to draw a contrast in its particular severity. The Threat Meter is a useful tool in the endeavor of seeking a solution to remove a threat or pursue additional analytical research for all types of computer users.

The following fields listed on the Threat Meter containing a specific value, are explained in detail below:

Threat Level: The threat level scale goes from 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest level of severity and 1 is the lowest level of severity. Each specific level is relative to the threat's consistent assessed behaviors collected from SpyHunter's risk assessment model.

Detection Count: The collective number of confirmed and suspected cases of a particular malware threat. The detection count is calculated from infected PCs retrieved from diagnostic and scan log reports generated by SpyHunter.

Volume Count: Similar to the detection count, the Volume Count is specifically based on the number of confirmed and suspected threats infecting systems on a daily basis. High volume counts usually represent a popular threat but may or may not have infected a large number of systems. High detection count threats could lay dormant and have a low volume count. Criteria for Volume Count is relative to a daily detection count.

Trend Path: The Trend Path, utilizing an up arrow, down arrow or equal symbol, represents the level of recent movement of a particular threat. Up arrows represent an increase, down arrows represent a decline and the equal symbol represent no change to a threat's recent movement.

% Impact (Last 7 Days): This demonstrates a 7-day period change in the frequency of a malware threat infecting PCs. The percentage impact correlates directly to the current Trend Path to determine a rise or decline in the percentage.

Threat Level:	8/10
Infected PCs:	12

First Seen:	October 10, 2013
Last Seen:	December 30, 2020
OS(es) Affected:	Windows

Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB is a variant of ZeroAccess or Sirefef, a broad-purpose Trojan that uses its attacks to compromise the security of your PC, establish connections with criminal servers, install other threats and steal confidential information. With Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB seeming to pose just as much of a threat to PC users as most other variants of Sirefef, Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB also is the ominous beneficiary of compromised advertisements that currently are being run on the Bing search engine. These YouTube-themed advertisements redirect their victims to pages hosting drive-by-download exploits that may install Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB, which proceeds with a flexible range of attacks. Given the sophistication of all versions of Sirefef, anti-malware products always should be used for deleting Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB, which is essentially undetectable by symptoms alone.

Why Even Trustworthy Sites Can't Be Trusted to Deliver Safe Advertisements

The current advertisement campaign from which Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB is collecting the biggest part of media attention is reliant on traffic from Bing, with the themes of these fraudulent advertisements centering on lyrics, free music downloads and YouTube-based video streams. Accordingly, Bing users who search the Web for YouTube-related sites may find one of these advertisements appearing in their 'Ads related to YouTube' section, with a rotating series of compromised/unreliable domains being used for each advertisement. Regardless of the domain that's used as a stepping stone, the result of clicking these advertisements is that your browser may be redirected to a compromised site that hosts a drive-by-download exploit. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB will be installed on your computer without its showing any visible download or installation process.

Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB includes most of the major features that malware analysts have expected from past versions of Sirefef, such as:

Establishing a backdoor connection that allows Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB to transfer data, update itself, download other files or receive new instructions on how to attack your PC.
Installing other forms of corrupted software onto your computer. Examples include keyloggers, browser hijackers and Bitcoin miners (the latter of which SpywareRemove.com malware experts highlight for having the potential to damage the hardware of your PC permanently).
Disabling a series of basic Windows security services, including your firewall, anti-malware software and the Windows Security Center.

Other functions of an individual Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB infection may differ from these major attacks as a natural result of Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB being able to receive instructions that adjust its behavior.

Getting the Bad Advertisement out of Your Perfectly Good Search Results

Although Bing's advertisements aren't inserted into its normal search results, the fact that domains installing Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB Trojans are masquerading as safe advertisements on a major website is a definite concern for malware researchers. Until this issue is resolved, you may want to consider switching to a different search engine or, at least, blocking advertisements that come from Bing's advertisement network.

However, whereas avoiding a Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB infection is a straightforward process, deleting Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB is a rocky affair that's complicated by its sophistication as a backdoor Trojan. SpywareRemove.com malware researchers find it best to use dedicated anti-malware products to delete Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB and all other high-level PC threats, and this, of course, should be done at the absolute first opportunity.

Technical Details

Additional Information

The following URL's were detected:

195(dot)2(dot)253.188MyVideosSite.infoatomicyoutubesite.infobasisnewsbox.infocoolmathexpert.infocoolmathreview.infocorrectnewsarea.infocorrectweathersite.infodailycoolmath.infodailyyoutubebox.infodictionaryspace.infoenergyyoutubecity.infoenterfreegames.infoexcellentvideosarea.infofreegamesexpert.infofullyoutubeexplore.infofullyweatherdotcom.infoicevideoslife.infomajorcoolmath.infomyvideossite.infomyyoutubechannel.infonewcoolmath.infoournewschannel.infosupercoolmath.infosuperfreegames.infoweb2carz.info