IM browser hijack with music

From FaceTime's Greynets Blog -- I'm not kidding -- spread through instant messaging, a browser hijacker that plays music and it's named Safety Browser. Oh, the irony.

This Safety Browser affects Yahoo Messenger and is installed by a worm dubbed yhoo32.explr, according to the FaceTime press release. This worm installs a new browser without notice and consent and changes the victim's homepage. More from the press release:

"This is one of oddest and more insidious pieces of malware we have encountered in years," commented Tyler Wells, Senior Director of Research at FaceTime Security Labs. "This is the first instance of a complete web browser hijack without the user's awareness. Similar 'rogue' browsers, such as 'Yapbrowser', have demonstrated the potential for serious damage by directing end-users to potentially illegal or illicit material. 'Rogue' browsers seem to be the hot new thing among hackers."

The write up at Greynets Blog has screenshots and humor. The Face Time researchers apparently had fun with this one, or maybe not.

...you see the above appear slap bang in the middle of your desktop. Worse still, music starts to blare out of your PC. Not just any old music - bad music. Bad looped music, with screeching guitars and awful drum n' bass beats. This madness continues for some time, and for the victim there is another "surprise"...every single time they boot up their PC from that moment on, the music greets them as their desktop appears and loops for a random amount of time. Words cannot convey the awful feeling of nausea this induces...testing a hijacking application has never been so painful!

What will the spyware pushers come up with next?