TrendLabs has received several reports a malicious Ichitaro document taking advantage of an as-yet undetermined vulnerability to drop a Trojan on target machines. Ichitaro is a popular Japanese word processing application.

The said exploit, which Trend Micro will detect as TROJ_TARODROP.Q, drops a Trojan to be detected as TROJ_SMALL.GQM. Based on initial analysis, TROJ_SMALL.GQM has the capability to drop other files onto the system, thus exposing the compromised machine to other attacks. More details about these malware will be posted shortly in the Trend Micro Virus Encyclopedia.

Note that this is not the first time a Japanese application was exploited by malware authors to perform their malicious deeds. Around the same time last year, the first Ichitaro exploit — TROJ_MDROPPER.BL — was detected (several variants has since followed). More recently, a vulnerability in the Japanese archiving application Lhaca was exploited by TROJ_LHDROPPER.A to drop a backdoor program.

The next time you go on a hunting spree for a blog theme, make sure you’re downloading from a trusted site or you may want to rethink giving your blog that oomph factor especially when you’re using WordPress or Joomla!.

A concerned blogger reported that a site named templatesbrowser.com has been repackaging blog themes to insert unwanted phishing code that could end up as a link spam. How does it go about doing this? It uses a PHP code in its template that can retrieve HTML codes like the one below, which are usually hidden from the user by setting the display style to None:

<div id=”copyl” style=”display: none;”> <a href=”http://www.casino[blocked]“>casino en ligne</a></div>

This tactic is used to increase the hits on a certain page therefore elevating its rank when searched. Note, however, that once marked by certain search engines as having this kind of code, the blog can be removed from query results altogether. What is more worrying though, is that this technique can be used by malware as a means to proliferate.

So when revamping your blog theme, always be on the lookout for theme-generator sites that may have ulterior (possibly malicious) motives and download only blog templates from trusted sources.