A new worm virus that targets poorly protected home routers has been detected.
Called moose, the malware tries to take over routers by trying thousands of weak passwords. Once it has accessed a device, it will grab login details of social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. These are then used to increase likes and followers of bogus accounts.
Security firm researchers Olivier Bilodeau and Thomas Dupuy said that it's "hard to gauge the exact number of routers that had been compromised because of the steps the moose's creators took to prevent detection. In addition, they said, the company hosting the command-and-control system for moose were very uncooperative," according to BBC News.
They also found out that the virus could also affect medical equipment and smart home systems.
For those that think they have the moose virus, they suggest users do a factory reset, firmware update, reinstallation and password change to get rid of the virus. Password change alone is not enough to get rid of the worm because the virus might have penetrated enough to have manual access since the credentials are already known to the operators of the virus, according to We Live Security.
The malware file containing the attack code is called "elan," which is French for moose.
