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| The Cellery worm plays Tetris as it infects
computers. |
Virus experts at Sophos have reported that a new worm, W32/Cellery-A, poses as
a playable version of the classic Russian computer game Tetris as
it attempts to spread across networks.
The Cellery worm, which gets its name from a message it displays
saying "Chancellery", makes changes to Windows settings to ensure
that it automatically runs when the operating system starts up.
Whilst the Tetris-like arcade game is running it plays a MIDI music
tune, and searches for other network drives and attached computers
to also try and infect.
"This worm puts up the Tetris game as a smokescreen as it tries
to hop from computer to computer across your network," said
Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant for Sophos. "If your company has a
culture of allowing games to be played in the office, your staff
may believe this simply a new game that has been installed - rather
than something that should cause concern."
Cellery is not the first virus or worm to allow infected users to
play games on their PCs. The
Bibrog worm posed as a
shooting game, whilst the
Coconut worm, written by the
female Belgian virus writer Gigabyte, gave users the opportunity to
throw coconuts at photographs of members of the computer security
community.
"Computer users can stay ahead of the game by ensuring they have
kept their anti-virus software updated," continued Cluley. "With
around a thousand new viruses being discovered every month it's
essential that everyone has systems in place to defend their data
and computer infrastructure."
Although there have only been a small number of reports of the
Cellery worm, Sophos recommends computer users ensure their
anti-virus software is up-to-date, and that companies protect
themselves with a consolidated solution
which can defend them from the threats of both spam and
viruses.
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.