New email spam alert

At the recent World Economic Forum held in Davos, experts discussed the extent of Internet fraud and it’s estimated that between 100 and 150 million PCs are now part of botnets – PCs infected with trojan virus programs run to execute online fraud scams, release spam email campaigns and infiltrate user personal identity information. All PC users should be aware of the latest methods virus originators employ to gain ‘backdoor’ access to PCs.

The recent storms that swept the UK and Europe saw the release of “Storm Trojan” – a supposedly informative email entitled ‘230 dead as storm batters Europe’. Unsuspecting users clicking on the email attachment (Video.exe, Read More.exe, Full Clip.exe or Full Story.exe) have contaminated their PCs and given hackers a means to access financial and personal information (both with a resale value) from the PCs’ hard drives.

The security firm F-Secure confirmed that the assault originated from Asia and estimates that thousands of users have unwittingly infected their PCs. Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure stated: ‘Trojan assaults of this scale are an unfortunate and increasingly common event. What is significant here though is the timely nature of this assault in relation to the European storm. Malware gangs are clearly using every technique and even tragedies like these to gain access to vulnerable machines.’

The weekend following the storms also saw an influx of ‘follow-up’ emails purporting such news as ‘Saddam Hussein alive!’ and going so far as ‘Third World War just have started!’ Hackers, pleased with the impact of their new ploy were obviously on a roll! More emails using the same technique are likely to follow.

Experts at Symantec estimate that over 300,000 PCs are now infected and were quoted as saying the Storm Worm and its variants is now the worst malware outbreak since 2005. As usual, security firms advise all users not to open emails or attachments unless from verified source – companies need to make all staff vigilant and not to open emails reporting celebrity or sensational news events and to keep security software up to date.

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