FBI warns of Valentines Day Storm Worm virus
- — 13 February, 2008 12:13
The FBI and the US Internet Crime Complaint Center today said that with Valentine's Day approaching, users should be on the lookout for spam e-mails spreading Storm Worm malware.
The Storm Worm virus has capitalized on various holidays in the last year by sending millions of e-mails advertising an e-card link within the text of the spam e-mail. Valentine's Day has been identified as the next target. Such email directs the recipient to click on a link to retrieve the electronic greeting card (e-card). Once the user clicks on the link, malware is downloaded to the Internet connected device and causes it to become infected and part of the Storm Worm botnet. A botnet is a network of compromised machines under the control of a single user.
Botnets are typically set up to facilitate criminal activity such as spam e-mail, identity theft, denial of service attacks, and spreading malware to other machines on the Internet, the FBI stated.
Over this past Christmas/New Year period, the Storm Worm morphed a couple times, changing the malicious file's name, shifting to new malware hosting servers and adding a rootkit to cloak the bot code from anti-virus software.
Others note another nefarious malware attack known as the Mega-D botnet, which offers discounted sexual enhancement pills to users, delivers a unreal 30 per cent more spam than Storm, is also out the waiting to be set free in malicious Valentines cards.
