Security news24 December 2007
Santa's virus striptease goes down a Storm, warns Sophos Mrs Claus goes wild with holiday strip show malware
Researchers at SophosLabs™ have warned computer users that hackers have wildly distributed an email on Christmas Eve pointing to a website containing a malicious Santa Claus-themed striptease.
The emails, which have many varied subject lines including "Your Secret Santa", "Santa Said, HO HO HO", "Warm Up this Christmas" and "Mrs. Clause Is Out Tonight!" attempt to direct internet users to the same website containing images scantily clad young women in a Santa suit. The images and “Download for free now!” button both linked to an executable detected as by Sophos as W32/Dorf-AE (a worm also known as Storm).
"Despite its disguise, Dorf-AE isn't much of a Christmas present. Users who visit the striptease website risk infecting their PC and allowing hackers to gain access to their PC's resources and data," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Heartless hackers and virus writers can attack at any time of year, and every computer user should be on the lookout for unusual emails and be wary of ever clicking on unsolicited links they are sent via email."
Sophos advises companies to be as suspicious during the holiday season as they would be at any other time of the year.
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About Sophos
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.
