Storm worm goes on attack around the world (update)

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Saturday, 20 January 2007

Watch out for the ‘storm worm’, a virus with many variants that wants to trick you into finding out more information about the big storm that raged across Europe killing at least 41 people.

Hundreds of thousands of malicious emails have been sent across the globe, according to Mikko Hypponen, the Chief Research Office at security firm F-Secure, with anyone opening up the email and clicking on the attachment at risk of becoming part of a ‘botnet’.

A botnet is a collection of computers under the secret control of hackers who not only search these computers for confidential data and email addresses, but use their collective power to send out spam emails and conduct denial of service attacks.

The “Storm Worm” has a misleading subject line which reads “230 dead as storm batters Europe”, according to Hypponen. He claims that "Trojan assaults of this scale are an unfortunate and increasingly common event. What is significant here though is the timely nature of this assault in relation to the European storm. Malware gangs are clearly using every technique and even tragedies like these to gain access to vulnerable machines."

Hypponen claims that the Storm Worm is almost as large as some of the big attacks in 2006, but it still hasn’t overtaken the damage caused by previous worms such as Sasser and Slammer.

The attachment inside the Storm Worm email comes with a range of different names, from 'Read More.exe' to 'Full Story.exe'. Variations of the email include subject lines such as 'US Secretary of State Condoleezza...' and 'British Muslims Genocide', with attachments called 'Video.exe' or 'Full Clip.exe'.

If you’ve been attacked by this virus, and want to get rid of it, F-Secure has instructions available on how to remove the virus, as would other anti-virus companies.

To protect yourself against attack, you should run the latest 2007 edition of your favorite Internet security software, and to regularly scan your PC for spyware and other malware with programs such as Windows Defender, SpyBot and Lavasoft Adaware. Another useful free software package to protect against phishing attacks is TrustDefender.

Remember… if in any doubt at all, don’t even click on the email to open it. Just leave it be, and make sure your anti-virus software is definitely 100% up-to-date before even trying to delete it. Don’t become a victim of social engineering hacker scams!
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