07 Mar 2001
Thou shalt not covet thy naked wife
Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, has
reminded companies of the importance of safe computing practice in
the wake of the latest virus to become widespread via email.
The W32/Naked
worm arrives as an attached executable file to an email entitled
"Fw: Naked Wife" containing the text "My wife never
look like that! ;-)". The virus is the latest in a long line
to use social engineering in an attempt to lure users into
activating it. Earlier viruses have pretended to be loveletters,
pictures of Russian tennis players, and even the Pikachu Pokemon
character.
"Do people really forget so quickly?" said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "Just four weeks after
the Anna Kournikova virus breakout we see another virus using a
similar trick to fool users into running it. Users need to ask
themselves if the promise of a naughty video clip is really worth
risking the data on their hard drive."
Sophos has published a list of tips of safe computing practice
(known as "Safe
Hex") which can dramatically reduce the chances of being
infected by viruses.
About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.