"Happy New Year!" worm on the move
Verisign is warning of a new e-mail worm spreading with the subject line "Happy New Year!"
Nancy Gohring (IDG News Service) 02/01/2007 09:19:45

Verisign is warning of a new e-mail worm arriving in inboxes with the subject "Happy New Year!"

The message, currently being spread from 160 e-mail domains, requires users to click on the attached "postcard.exe" file in order to cause damage. The file will install several different malicious code variants including Tibs, Nwar, Banwarum and Glowa on the computer. It then executes mass mailings from the infected computer.

The worm is already being heavily spammed, Verisign said. The security company has found one network that is sending out five e-mails per second with the worm.

While the worm requires user interaction to do harm, Verisign believes that it has potential to do damage because of the "Happy New Year!" subject line. The company is warning e-mail users to be wary before clicking on messages that they think may be legitimate happy new year messages from friends.

As of Thursday, multiple large networks have reported interceptions of the e-mail, Verisign said. While the "postcard.exe" attachment has the same name as an attack spread earlier this month, this is a new and largely undetected threat, Verisign said.

More about VeriSign
Recommend this article?
Yes0 votes
No0 votes

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

Enter the fully qualified URL, eg. http://www.example.com/
Users posting comments agree to the PC World comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Syndicate content
 
Gift Guide
Samsung

CXO Latest

LED Advisor
 

Colour your world with Samsung

A chance to win with every
Samsung Consumable purchase*