The American Red Cross (ARC) is warning Internet users to beware of a credit card stealing Trojan horse program that is made to look as though it comes from the disaster relief organization. 

According to the ARC, the fraudulent program arrives as a large executable file in an e-mail attachment that presents a form bearing the Red Cross logo requesting the user's address and credit card information when activated.  After a victim completes the form and clicks its "Donate Now" button, the data will be uploaded to a third-party site not affiliated with the ARC. 

Symantec Corp. alerted the ARC  to the e-mail on October 17th and issued a bulletin about the malicious program, which is named the "Septer Trojan."  The Trojan program will not allow users to close the displayed form by clicking on the "close window" icon in the program's upper right corner. The company advises users instead to use the Windows "end task" function.

The American Red Cross said it is not currently soliciting donations by e-mail. The ARC warning can be found at http://www.redcross.org/press/other/ot_pr/011018virus.html

Symantec's description of Septer Trojan can be found at
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/septer.trojan.html

(Source: Newsbytes, 19 October)