Storm chaos prompts virus surge
Pastor Dale Morgan
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*Storm chaos prompts virus surge*
E-mails claiming to contain details of the storms that battered Europe
contain a malicious virus, security firms warn.
The e-mails with the subject line "230 dead as storm batters Europe",
can leave computers vulnerable to attack.
The messages were first detected as the storms, which have killed at
least 28 people, continued to rage.
Variants of the virus have circulated for a number of days, but experts
say they were surprised at how quickly the new modified virus appeared.
"The new virus only started spreading a few hours ago," said Mikko
Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure. "The
spamming started when the storms were still raging."
Mr Hypponen believes the adaptation was designed to take advantage of
the interest in the storms.
Security firms advise computer users not to open e-mail attachments
unless they are expecting them and to keep security software up to date.
Slave network
Malicious coders often take advantage of celebrity names or large news
events to spread viruses and worms.
in 2005, an e-mail scam offering regular news updates following
Hurricane Katrina spread a virus that allowed hackers to take control of
a computer user's files.
"Malware writers will use any newsworthy event to try and gain a few
minutes of airtime and infect a few unprepared computer users," said a
spokesperson for security firm McAfee.
How many people clicked on it? It could be thousands or tens of thousands
Mikko Hypponen
In pictures: European storms
The new virus, called Small.DAM, was spread through emails with a
variety of subject lines purporting to be news. Other variants included
"British Muslims Genocide" and "U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza..."
The virus is a trojan - a program or message that look benign but
contains malicious code - that is installed when a user opens the e-mail
and clicks on an attachment. The attachment could be called Video.exe,
Read More.exe, Full Clip.exe or Full Story.exe.
"When you click on the attachment it installs a backdoor on the infected
PC giving full access to the virus writer to do anything they want,"
said Mr Hypponen.
"What they typically do is search your hard drive for credit card
numbers and e-mail addresses because they can resell both of those."
Typically, said Mr Hypponen, the virus writers will then use the
computer in a botnet - network of slave machines used to support all
kinds of cyber crimes such as sending spam and phishing e-mails.
Users would not be aware that their computer was infected.
F-secure said it had seen "hundreds of thousands of emails sent" but did
not know how many machines were infected.
"How many people clicked on it? It could be thousands or tens of
thousands," said Mr Hypponen.
However, most firms treated the virus as a low security threat and have
now issued security updates.