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| The virus tries to download a picture of porn
star Silvia Saint. |
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have announced
the discovery of the first malware for StarOffice.
The virus, which has been dubbed Stardust, is the first example
of malware written in the StarOffice macro language. Macro viruses
have most frequently troubled users of Microsoft Office since the
discovery of the Concept virus in 1995
which infected Microsoft Word files, but have rarely been seen for
non-Microsoft applications.
"The Stardust virus doesn't appear to work very well, and as
such poses as close-to-zero threat to computer users as is
imaginable," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "It appears that someone
attempted to write this virus purely to prove that such a thing was
possible, rather than with any serious motive."
Sophos experts report that an image which the virus attempts to
download contains a photograph of a porn star, with the message
"Vxers love you!!"
"Clearly whoever wrote this virus is an ardent fan of the Czech
porn actress, Silvia Saint," continued Cluley. "The word 'Vxers' is
a frequently used phrase in the computer underground for those who
are interested in writing and distributing viruses. Miss Saint,
however, is probably not similarly attracted to people who sit in
their back bedrooms writing malicious computer code."
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.