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Virus Writers Launch 'Heart Attack'|
- By CXOtoday Staff, Jan 21, 2008 1430 hrs IST
- Tags : Virus Writers Launch Heart Attack
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This Worm-spreading mail have subject lines like, 'Eternity of Your Love', 'I Love You Soo Much', 'falling in love with you', 'For You My Love', 'our journey', 'our love nest', 'Memories of You' and 'A Kiss So Gentle'.
The mail shows a pink heart and a message that reads, "Your download should begin shortly. If your download does not start in 10-20 seconds, you can click here to launch the download and then press run. Enjoy!" What's downloaded on clicking this message is a file named 'withlove.exe' or 'with_love.exe'. This carries a malware named 'Zhelatin.sg'.
"This is a new rollout from the ill famed storm factory with some changes in code and a new spreading theme. And if one has to go by the initial volumes, the attack seems fairly large," says Govind Rammurthy, CEO of MicroWorld Technologies. "The two important factors that enable this malware to give a hard time for many security solutions are the speed at which new variants are dished out and countless places where they can host these threats."
The activities of 'Zhelatin.sg' inside the compromised computer are pretty much the same as its predecessors. The Worm drops a file named 'burito.ini', stops Antivirus running on the computer and activates a range of ports to connect to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks before making the computer a part of the mammoth storm botnet. From that point on, the computer would send out spam or do many other things that the remote attacker would want it to do.
"So far the primary duty of a computer in this network is only to relay spam. However one would shudder to think what happens when the controllers behind this network having such massive computing power move on to spread more harmful Viruses or start widespread Denial-of-Services attacks? I believe it's high time law enforcement agencies work with security companies to initiate a global crackdown on this criminal gang," says Rammurthy.
Related Links:
Virus Gazing: Predictions For 2005
Symantec Discovers Virus Party
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