P2P-Worm.Win32.Mandragore

Technical Details

This worm is Win32 application 8192 bytes of length, it is able to infect Win32 systems only. To spread from computer to computer the worm uses the Gnutella peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network (see http://gnutella.wego.com).

On infected computers the worm registers itself as Gnutella network node, listens to traffic of file requests and replies positive on these requests. The worm reports the file name that is being searched, but with EXE extension. If a remote user gets that reply and download the file, it gets a copy of the worm to its machine. The worm is not able to run by itself on remote computer, a user has to start the file to activate the worm routines.

While installing itself to the system the worm copies itself to Windows CurrentUser startup directory with "Gspot.exe" name and sets hidden and system attributes for that copy.

On next Windows startup the worm is automatically run by Windows (being placed in Startup folder), runs two threads (background processes) and stays in Windows memory. Under Win9x the worm also registers itself as a hidden (service) process (not visible in task list).

The worm's threads performs two actions:

The 1st thread reports "I'm Gnutella node, and here is file you are looking for."

The 2nd thread sends "the filename you are looking for" with ".exe" extension, and with worm code in it.

The worm code contains "copyright" text strings:

[Gspot 1-]
freely shared by mandragore/29A