28 Feb 2002
Britney fears: virus could drive you crazy, warns Sophos
Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, is
today warning users about a new worm that can spread by clicking on
an attachment pretending to be photographs of teen pop princess
Britney Spears.
VBS/Britney-A
arrives in the victim's inbox with the subject line "RE:Britney
Pics", body text "Take a look at these pics..." and attachment
"BRITNEY.CHM." When executed, the file displays a message similar
to "Enable ActiveX To See Britny Pictures" (sic) before infecting
the hard drive and sending itself to all addresses in the Outlook
address book. The worm also attempts to distribute itself via
Internet Relay Chat.
"Britney has joined the ranks of glamorous, highly attractive
people to have viruses written about them," said Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant at Sophos Anti-Virus. "Previous stars
to receive this treatment include Anna Kournikova and Jennifer Lopez."
"Britney is a very popular celebrity and many computer users -
from teenyboppers to fascinated fathers - would be interested in
seeing photos of her," Cluley continued. "Users should remember
basic safe computing rules
and not be coaxed into opening any unsolicited email
attachments."
As yet, Sophos has only received one report of this worm in the
wild, but in view of Britney's fame, the company is nonetheless
encouraging users to be vigilant.
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 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.