Researchers at security firm Damballa reported that a fake version of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) infected with a Trojan horse has created a botnet with thousand of bots under its control.
The bogus software, which was made available for download via popular piracy websites, torrent sites and online fora, now controls over 27,000 bots, as per rough estimates.
Trend Micro reported that it found the Trojan horse TROJ_DROPPER.SPX masquerading as a copy of Windows 7 RC. Security experts revealed that Windows 7 RC is being used by malware distributors to attract more downloaders who later become innocent victims.
Botnets are usually used to carry out distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), send junk emails and phishing - the process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity.
We urge you not to download Windows 7 RC elsewhere since it can be downloaded hassle-free and safely from the Windows 7 download page.