"There is no MSN Messenger 8 yet. Not in public beta anyway. However, there's a new virus going around pretending to be "MSN Messenger 8 Working BETA," reports the F-Secure blog.
"There's two ways to catch it. First, by downloading it from a fake site where it has been supposedly "'leaked':If you download and run BETA8WEBINSTALL.EXE from that site, you won't get a new chat client. Instead, your existing MSN Messenger will start to send download links to everyone in your contact list. It also connects your machine to a botnet server. The download link always contains the recipients' email address. For example, if you'd have a friend with email address huuhaa@foobar.com, he would get a download link like msgrbeta8.com/im.php?msn=huuhaa@foobar.com".
The F-Secure post also has screen shots.
There is a new verion of Microsoft Messenger on the way: it's called Microsoft Live Messenger. It is being beta tested at the moment, and you can follow its progress on the team's blog, Inside Windows Live Messenger.
