Posted on 01/20/2007 2:00:54 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Computer virus uses European storms to spread quickly
Fri Jan 19, 10:47 AM ET
A computer virus has made use of storms sweeping across Europe to infect email systems and spread rapidly before dying down, a Finnish IT security company has said.
The virus appeared in emails with the subject line "230 dead as storm batters Europe" and attachments bearing names such as "Full Clip.exe", "Full Story.exe", "Read More.exe" and "Video.exe".
The programme infects computers when users click on the message.
"A significant network attack was launched globally in the early hours of Thursday morning using news of a European storm as the hook to lure the unsuspecting," anti-virus programme producer F-Secure said in a statement.
The company, which ranked the virus a two on its scale of three, said several hundred thousand email addresses had received the virus but only a few thousand people were believed to have opened the infected attachment.
By Friday at 4:00 pm (1400 GMT), the epidimic was almost neutralised.
"The situation is not changing anymore. The virus was mostly targetting European users as it was sent out very early European time and reached European boxes when people woke up. It was not too interested in American audiences," chief research officer at F-Secure, Mikko Hyppoenen, said.
"It's dying, but users will be affected until the users realise they're infected and clean their machines," he said.
Anti-virus programmes automatically block viruses of this kind. Computer users who do not have such a programme can manually delete the message.
"What is significant here ... is the timely nature of this assault in relation to the European storm. Gangs are clearly using every technique and even tragedies like these to gain access to vulnerable machines," Hyppoenen said.
The virus was detected in Asia on Friday, where it was likely to have been created, F-Secure said.
"The likely intention is to create a new raft of zombie computers to steal information and to further propagate large-scale spam (unwanted email)," according to F-Secure.
The "Trojan" virus creates a backdoor in the computer that can be exploited later by the programme authors.
Countries across Europe on Thursday and Friday were hit by devastating storms that killed at least 40 people and left widespread damage and disruption to travel and power supplies.
Ping!
The ".exe" should be a dead giveaway to anyone with a-little computer savey or at least a red flag.
"Full Story.exe", LOL. Spare me.
New virus, old scam. Who falls for these any more?
Bump. I got dozens of these on a couple separate accounts.
Titles such as "Russian President Putin shot dead" or "Sadam Husein is alive"
NEVER OPEN AN EXE FILE IN YOUR MAIL!!!
There is another trick they sometimes use:
They rename the executable something like www.cnn.com .
.com files are run the same as .exe files
And more people are foolish enough to think that they are following a link.
I have to give my ISP (BellSouth/ATT) credit on this one. All I got were cleaned messages and a note from the e-postmaster saying they deleted the virus from the emails.
bump
I am less than, a little
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