28 Jan 2002
My party worm gatecrashes PCs
It's my party and I'll infect if I want to...
Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, is
warning computer users against the new My Party email worm (aka
W32/MyParty-A) which is spreading in the wild.
The worm, which may appear to have come from a colleague or
friend, arrives as an email with the subject line 'new photos from
my party!'.
The message reads: 'Hello! My party...It was absolutely amazing!
I have attached my web page with new photos! If you can please make
color prints of my photos. Thanks!'
Attached to the email is a file called www.myparty.yahoo.com
which some users may believe is a link to a website. In fact once
the file is launched the worm sends a copy of itself to every
contact in the Windows Address book.
"This worm uses cunning social engineering to spread itself,"
said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos
Anti-Virus. "My Party dupes users into thinking they'll see
exciting snaps of frolicking partygoers. Instead of blushing over
embarassing photos, infected users will be red-faced about
forwarding malicious code to their friends, colleagues and
customers."
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.