Posted by Virus Bulletin on Nov 9, 2006
Bush and Putin still alive, no nuclear war ahead.
An email worm is posing as news of global warfare and the death of major world leaders in an attempt to persuade recipients to open the attached malware.
The worm, variously known as Nuwar, Dref, Luder or Mixor, carries a frenzied warning of a major news event in its subject lines, followed by body text referring to the death of US President George W. Bush or Russian President Putin, or even in some cases the outbreak of global thermonuclear war. The attachment claims to be further details of the news event, but in fact just contains another copy of the worm, ready to infect a new computer, reap stored email addresses and continue the cycle of spamming.
'The urgency and importance of the message is clearly intended to panic victims into opening the attached file,' said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'Among the social engineering tactics used by spammers and virus writers, fear is almost as common a lure as greed and lust, an effective means of bypassing people's normal rational caution by appealing to more basic instincts. Email users need to ensure they think logically before opening attachments, and never act out of panic or passion.'
The worm also infects files and opens a backdoor to the computer, with possible self-updating functionality. See further analysis from Symantec, Sophos or Panda
Posted on 09 November 2006 by Virus Bulletin
