A new worm highlights the increasing political turmoil in the
South American country of Bolivia. The worm, W32/Colevo-A, continually
points the web browsers of infected computers to a variety of
pictures of Evo Morales, leader of the Bolivian coca leaf growers'
union and runner-up in last year's presidential elections.
Bolivia is one of the world's largest producers of the coca
leaf, the raw material for cocaine. The government of Bolivia, with
financial encouragement from the United States, has initiated a
crop-eradication programme. However many of Bolivia's poorest
farmers, led by Morales, are incensed because the coca leaf is
often their only source of income. The dispute has become bloody,
with armed conflict between the army and some coca leaf
growers.
As well as redirecting web browsers to pictures of Evo Morales,
the worm also makes numerous changes to the Windows Registry and
appends the following text to the WIN.INI system file:
Viva el EVO, y jamas erradicaran la Coca
Cola!!! mentira colla maldito!!
which translates as:
Long life to EVO and Coca Cola will never be
eradicated!!! that's a lie, bloody colla!!
"The Colevo worm is another example of how virus writers are
trying to use their creations to spread political messages," said
Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Where once people may have
sprayed graffiti on a brick wall we are now seeing more activists
spreading messages via computer malware."
Previous politically-motivated viruses include the Injustice
worm (also known as VBS/Staple-A), which disseminated
pro-Palestinian messages and spammed a number of Israeli government
email addresses, and Mawanella
(also known as VBS/VBSWG-Z) which highlighted friction between
Muslims and Buddhists in Sri Lanka.
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