The malware is very powerful and the risk is associated to do harvest personal information or business documents, to install banking Trojans to steal money or other unwanted software to perform illegal operations. Poweliks has been documented by Tokyo-based antivirus firm Trend Micro.
It usually infects computers via a corrupted Microsoft Word file attached to an email, when the malicious file is opened. When the computer is booted,the malware gives control to an external IP address managed by the malware’s creators and they can issue further commands. “As the malware is very powerful and can download any payload, the amount of possible damage is not really measurable,” said malware researcher Paul Rascagnères. This malware doesn’t download any files to the infected computer.
