Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection,
issued an advisory about a mass-mailing computer worm that calls
for a vote on whether America should go to war.
The W32/Vote-A
worm spreads itself with the subject line "Peace BeTweeN AmeriCa
And IsLaM !" and has an attached file called WTC.exe
The message body of the email reads "Hi iS iT waR Against
AmeriCa Or IsLaM !? Let's Vote To Live in Peace!"
Users who run the attached program, which has clearly been named
to reflect the destruction of the World Trade Center on September
11, are in danger of having all the data on their hard drive wiped
and passwords stolen.
"Despite calls from alarmed customers, we do not believe this
worm will become particularly widespread, because it bears all the
hallmarks of an unwanted, unauthorised email," said Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "Causing
inconvenience to computer users is no way to raise political
awareness."
Sophos reports that this not the first virus that has been
inspired by political events. Earlier this year the Mawanella worm highlighted
the friction between Muslims and Buddhists in Sri Lanka. Other
viruses have called for people to vote in a particular direction in
referendums, or displayed offensive messages about Ronald Reagan,
Margaret Thatcher and former South African leader P W Botha.
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 security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.