Pirates of the Caribbean spun a yarn with Admiral Becket always being two steps behind the half-drunk swagger of Captain Jack Sparrow. This reel life is actually a very good metaphor of real life software piracy as pirates elude authorities–making bigwigs like Microsoft initiate efforts such as the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) in Windows XP and Vista. The bad guys are turning the tables though. A Trojan spyware detected by Trend Micro as TSPY_KARDPHISH.A is using WGA to phish for credit card information.

Once installed on a system, it displays the following to to activate Windows:

If the user clicks Yes, it then displays these fields to get the user to reveal credit card information:

It gets nasty if the user doesn’t enter the required information because it shuts down the computer.

This spyware technique is reminiscent of another spyware that hit systems early this month that also used a known Windows feature to steal personal finance-related infomation. Looks like malicious spyware have found a new window of opportunity in Windows.

Spyware Ahoy!