Another Nurech Worm Appears, on Valentines’ Day

PandaLabs has identified the Nurech.B worm that purports to be a Valentine Day's message and is similar to its predecessor, Nurech.A. Meanwhile Nurech.A released last week continues to proliferate.

Nurech.B comes through e-mails having subject lines as "Happy Valentine's Day", "The Valentine's Angel", or "Valentine's Day Dance". Here also the e-mail sender's name a woman's such as Sandra, Wendy, Vicky or Willa. The attachment in the e-mail is an e-greeting card showing file names as "Greeting card.exe", "Greeting Postcard.exe", or "Postcard.exe".

When unsuspecting recipients click on the attachment, the worm replicates on the hard drive and then hides with the help of rootkit functions. The worm also collapses certain anti-virus, anti-spyware and other security software that may be on the system.

Mr. Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs said in a company press release that the e-mail certainly aims to trick users by using enticing subject lines so that they open the attachment. This genre of e-mails that relates to a romantic theme is most of the time successful. Therefore the company strongly recommends users to restrain from opening attachments they have not asked for, regardless of its content.

The hackers are not satisfied with one massive attack they tried on everybody last week when they circulated Nurech.A, Corrons warns. So, they are making a second attempt on Valentine's Day itself.

Meanwhile, experts keep on reminding users to play safe when seeking companions online. Webroot Software, an Internet security developer has cautioned users not to post personal information inadvertently such as while responding to false profiles on various social networking sites. There are spammers, online predators and identity thieves who can abuse that information.

Cyber criminals can harvest a wealth of personal information and opportunities to make money from social networking and online dating sites, according to Peter Watkins, CEO of Webroot Software in a company press release.

Despite the utmost efforts and strict advises by hosting sites, users can still fall prey to criminals and their malware attacks. Therefore, they must be careful while posting information. They must also use a sound Internet security solution that offers regular updates against malicious software.

Related article: Another Worm Using Bush’s Theme Creeps Into PCs

» SPAMfighter News - 2/26/2007