New malware poses as Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Notification

A new piece of very nasty malware has been recently discovered on spyware help forums, first here and again here. The file name is wgavn.exe and it creates a service named “Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Notification”, as seen in this line in the HijackThis log.

O23 – Service: Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Notification (wgavn) – Unknown owner – C:\WINDOWS\system32\wgavn.exe

Suzi tested it on her virtual machine running XP Pro, totally unpatched. On execution, wgavn.exe creates a folder, C:\Windows\etc\, that contains a file named services.exe. Wgavn.exe copies itself to the \System32\ folder as shown in the HijackThis line above.

On her virtual machine, it disabled the following: WinPatrol, an anti-spyware program, a third party firewall, VMware Tools, VMware User Process, and VPCUserServices by changing the values of the Run keys in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Another researcher reported it disabled the Windows firewall and System Restore.

Wgavn.exe immediately attempted to contact several different IP addresses. The ISP is being notified in an attempt to investigate these sites and IPs. At this time, it’s unknown how the two users who posted the HijackThis logs got infected with this. The sample has been submitted to anti-malware vendors but as of earlier today was poorly detected. Kaspersky is now detecting it as Backdoor.Win32.IRCBot.st, and another AV at VirusTotal detected it as Backdoor.Win32.IRCBot.BV.

Thanks to Suzi Turner, her post about it.