Iranian anti-censorship software ‘Simurgh’ circulated with malicious backdoor

Simurgh is an Iranian stand-alone proxy software for Microsoft Windows. It has been used mainly by Iranian users to bypass censorship since 2009. The downloadable file is less than 1 MB and can be downloaded within a reasonable amount of time even with a slow internet connection, which makes it convenient for many users in Iran.

This Trojan has been specifically crafted to target people attempting to evade government censorship. Given the intended purpose of this software, users must be very careful if they have been infected by this Trojan. Additionally, they should be cautious about installing software, especially circumvention software, from untrusted sources. Where possible, software should be downloaded from trusted official websites over HTTPS. If checksums or cryptographic signatures are provided by the software vendor, these should be checked prior to installation.