Winmx Software making calls to Port 25
I have been involved as a chatroom admin within the Winmx program for quite
awhile now and have been the one to make whatever security updates were needed
to keep the room a pleasant place for folks who visit. A couple of months ago,
I installed Zone Alarm. While running a temp room, ZA popped up and asked if I
would allow the Winmx program to send information on Port 25. This particular
version of ZA allows you to specify on a program by program basis, which are
allowed to send email. Denying Winmx access to Port 25 resulted in the room
dropping, although, Winmx itself continued to run.
At first I thought it was the work of a trojan that had found it's way into my
system. But, after running a variety of system scanners available on the
internet as well as spyware scanners, my system still came up clean and bug
free. A relief there, but still not an answer to the Port 25 call.
I installed a clean multi-boot partition and downloaded the Winmx program
(v.3.53) directly from Winmx.com. I then installed the 30 day trial version of
the Iris Packet Sniffer software and of course Zone Alarm. I ran ZA with "ask
permission" set on port 25 and it once again it popped up a request. I then
defined a filter in Iris to capture activity on 25 (SMTP), 43 (WHOIS), 69
(TFTP), 80 (HTTP), 110 (POP3), 119 (NNTP), 143 (IMAP) and 7940 which is a port
I am told is used by the Winmx program for communicating with their servers.
Test 1 - Zone Alarm, Iris and Winmx using a primary connection and hosting a
testroom. Packets were captured on port 25. The packets captured using port
25 were destined for a valid ip address in Japan. I am told Winmx does not
have servers in Japan, and the activity I have captured from them tends to
verify that statement.
Test 2 - No applications running except Zone Alarm and Iris. No packets
captured.
Test 3 - Zone Alarm, Iris and Winmx running a secondary connection. The only
packets captured were on Port 80 showing the setup and Keep Alive calls to
Winmx.com
I did email Winmx on this issue, but have not received a response from them. I
know of other systems that have this issue, but as they received their setups
from me, they aren't far enough at arms length to act as verifiers. Today, I
received verification that I was not alone with this problem when another user
posted it to one of the support websites. I have asked this user to confirm my
findings to the best of his ability.
This activity clearly raises an alarm of a possible backdoor to the Winmx
program. I would appreciate any information on how to proceed from here.
RetroGranny