Vindictive Valentine Virii On The Loose

Valentine's Day is always a fresh roll call for people too eager to open that mail from the cute little red-haired girl, a fact virus writers know only too well.

Mcafee is warning against a possible virus epidemic as 1 in 40 spam emails are found to be carrying virii or malware, under the innocuous "Valentine."

Many reports are already coming in of an attempt to push the Waledac Trojan, a virus built on the "success" of the Storm Trojan.

When the "Storm" is opened, it installs a wincom32 service and fires out random emails from the infected computer with attached executable files. The unwitting receiver may receive "withlove.exe" from their loved one, and with one click, the infection starts again. It is also thought to help download extra virii to keep it hidden from view. As of January 22, 2007, the Storm Worm accounted for 8% of all malware infections globally.

Waledac performs all of Storm's tricks, but it also listens for commands from its main server, allowing it to update itself in a similar way to anti-virus programs.

At the moment, Mcafee has said that the virus emails themselves have very gooey subject lines ("Deepest Love") and usually contain a heart graphic, followed by a link to the malware site.

So, when presented with a "Wuv" email, take time to think. It may be your hard-drive as well as your heart that gets broken.

Source: The Register
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