Bush worm dances its way into computers
A Worm named ‘Worm.Win32.VB.au’ spreads with the help of messages written in Spanish, which says ‘mira esta animacion de bush’, coming from known and unknown contacts. Translated to English, it reads as: ‘See this animation of Bush’. After getting into a victim’s computer, the worm quickly sends the malicious links to all contacts present.
“Using fake and real stories about world political leaders is a tried and tested way of malware proliferation,” says Rohini Sonawane, COO of MicroWorld. “From death stories of Vladimir Putin, to the heart attack of the Australian prime minister to the resurrection of Boris Yeltsin, these ploys have always triggered an instant reaction from a good number of computer users.”
Most such attacks in the past were in the form of e-mails carrying sensational attachments. But in the case of malwares using instant messages like the one in question, it’s about just one click. The best social engineering is when you don’t give an opportunity for the targeted user to think, and instead get them to act on reflexes, adds Rohini.
Win32.VB.au is written in Visual Basic language and comes with a size of 122 880 bytes. The malware creates a few registry entries so that it gets executed every time the computer is started.
The IM worm does not contain any dangerous payload in its present form. But similar methods can be employed by virus writers in proliferating more destructive worms or Trojan downloaders in a possible second wave of attacks. Exploiting vulnerabilities in instant messages is another mode of malware proliferation that is getting increasing attention from virus writers.
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