Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, today
advised computer users of the threat posed by a new virus which
tries to exploit workers desperate to find out the latest scores
from the World Cup in S Korea/Japan.
The VBS/Chick-F
virus spreads via email and internet relay chat posing as a web
utility to see up-to-the-minute results from the football
championship.
"Whoever wrote this virus is aiming to exploit football fans
around the world, hungry for news about their team's progress,"
said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos
Anti-Virus. "System administrators should ensure that staff who
forget to feign illness and actually turn up at work don't incur
the penalties a virus infection can bring."
The new virus typically arrives in an email with the subject
"RE: Korea Japan Results". If the recipient runs the attached file
and follows its instructions to enable ActiveX the worm will
attempt to spread via Internet Relay Chat and forward itself to
everyone in the user's address book.
Sophos has received no reports of the virus in the wild to date,
but notes that it comes just days after it warned companies of the
dangers of lax security during the World Cup competition. Sophos
advises users to keep their anti-virus protection up-to-date and to
be suspicious of all unsolicited email attachments.
In 1998, in the run-up to the World cup competition in France,
another
football-inspired virus asked infected victims to gamble on who
the winner might be, and if the user did not choose the right team
triggered a warhead which was capable of wiping all the data off
the hard drive.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.