Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus and
spam analysis centres, have discovered an email virus which poses
as a love letter almost five years since the original VBS/Lovelet worm (also
known as ILOVEYOU or The Love Bug) used a similar trick to fool
computer users around the world.
The W32/Assiral-A worm
spreads via email with the following characteristics:
Subject:
Re: LOV YA!
Body:
Kindly read and reply to my LOVE LETTER in the
attachments :-)
Attachment:
LOVE_LETTER.TXT.exe
|
| A typical message sent by the W32/Assiral-A
worm. |
If an unsuspecting user launches the attached file the worm will
attempt to copy itself to other computers, and open a webpage
hosted at Geocities.
|
| The worm opens a webpage hosted at
Geocities. |
Additionally, the worm will drop a file containing the following
text onto the infected computer:
Greetz from LARISSA.B!
I will survive,
In this moment in time.
You computer will crash,
So, you will be mine.
I never crash,
I never fail.
So, in this moment in time,
I will surive...
- LARISSA AUTHOR - 5-15-05
|
| The message dropped by the W32/Assiral-A
worm. |
"The Assiral worm uses an old trick to seduce users into
believing they may have received a romantic love letter," said
Graham Cluley,
senior technology consultant for Sophos. "It's almost five years
since the infamous Love Bug worm fooled millions of Windows users
around the world using a similar tactic - and it seems unlikely
that Assiral will have anything like as much impact."
Sophos recommends companies protect their email gateways with a
consolidated solution to defend against
viruses and spam. Businesses should also secure their desktop and
servers with automatically updated protection.
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.