[pchelpers] News:Storm worm stirs up email virus chaos

Caroline McCarthy CNET News.com 
Published: 16 Apr 2007 11:24 BST


It seems likely that Thursday marked the largest proliferation of email
virus attacks in more than a year, according to security company
Postini.

Postini said that two variations of the Storm worm virus, which
originally spread across the internet in January, have quickly driven
global virus levels 60 times higher than their daily average. Email
users should be on alert for messages with "love"-related subject lines
and an executable attachment that would contain a Trojan virus, as well
as messages with "Worm Alert!" subject lines that contained a .zip file
full of malicious code.

Postini, which is based in San Carlos, California, says it processes
more than two billion messages per day in order to compile its reports.

According to warning notices from Postini as well as VeriSign, which has
also been following the threat, clicking on the executable file in one
of the new Storm worm emails installs a rootkit with anti-security
measures, which mask the malicious software's presence from virus scans
and shut down security programs that may be running. The virus then taps
into a private peer-to-peer network where it can download new updates
and upload personal information from the compromised computer.
Additionally, the virus scans the machine's hard drive to locate email
addresses to which it can replicate itself.

More here:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39286707,00.htm
-- 
John Durham
Site http://modecideas.com
Server hosted on Ubuntu 4.10
Good advice is like good paint. It only works when applied.



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