Panda Software, a developer of virus and intrusion prevention solutions, today announced that it has detected the appearance of Spymaster.A, a Trojan designed to steal all types of information from computers.

The Trojan combines spyware and keylogger characteristics, enabling it to capture everything from information about users' Internet usage to user names and passwords entered for services such as online banking. Additionally, it can stealthily pass itself off as the MSN Messenger application so that users remain unaware of its dangerous presence on their systems.

Spymaster.A cannot spread by itself, and therefore needs the intervention of a malicious user. It can reach computers as an attachment to email messages or could be downloaded from web pages, P2P applications, instant messaging systems or infected CDs or diskettes.

According to Luis Corrons, Director of PandaLabs, "Keylogger Trojans are usually used by cyber-crooks to steal confidential information for fraudulent purposes.  Given that, nowadays, financial gain is the main motivation for the creators of malicious code, it is almost certain that more examples will appear, and that they will be increasingly sophisticated and difficult to detect. The way that Spymaster.A hides the process in memory is a good example of this."