Thousands of printers hit by malware, spew gibberish

Paper companies the world over have something to celebrate about. Computers printers the world over have been hit by a malware, as a result of which they have been spewing out pages and pages of meaningless words.

First detected by Symantec two years ago, the malware called Milicenso Trojan has resurfaced and hit businesses in Europe, Southern America, USA and even India. The malware in itself is not a huge issue and many such malware plague the net but the fact that printers seem to have gone berserk because of it separates it from the rest.

Malwares can be spread through a variety of ways. They can be distributed via email attachment, a compromised website, or fake video codecs. This particular malware is specifically targeting French speaking users and is programmed to generate print jobs featuring piles of garbage characters from infected computers until connected printers run out of paper.

This, however, does not appear to be the main goal of the cyber-perpetrators. Users of infected machines get flooded with dodgy pop-up ads which redirect them to advertisement sites. This is a common method used by malware coders to generate quick and easy revenue. The printing is a mere side-effect to this process.

The words appear as gibberish because they are sourced from files in the virus's main directory, much like system files would appear to make no sense if pasted in a clear text format. The printing only stops if the printer runs out of ink, the infected machine is disconnected from the network or if the administrator is able to axe the process.