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| The Sundor-A worm displays an alien
greeting. |
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus and spam analysis centers, have advised users not
to panic about a new worm which displays a message claiming to come
from an extraterrestrial alien.
The WM97/Sundor-A worm
displays a picture of an alien with the following message:
I'm the alien.
Have a happy week.
I liked your computer.
The worm also deletes programs and documents from the infected
computer's hard drive, hides desktop icons, and disables some
security software potentially opening the computer to infection by
other worms, viruses and spyware.
"The good news is that you're more likely to be abducted by an
alien than be infected by this virus," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "The Sundor-A worm has so far
been remarkably unsuccessful at spreading its message to the
inhabitants of planet Earth. Nevertheless, internet users should be
reminded that it's important to keep their anti-virus protection
up-to-date and always think twice before running unknown files on
their computers."
Sophos users were automatically protected against the Sundor-A
worm on Thursday 14 July.
"As we see more and more viruses, trojans and spyware being
written with the intention of stealing from the user it is becoming
more unusual to encounter malware which announces its presence to
the user," continued Cluley. "The message displayed by the Sundor
worm effectively limits its chances for successfully spreading.
Although it is possible that some users may believe that it is a
joke program sent from a friend rather than something deliberately
malicious."
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.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.