Computer Worm Spreads Rapidly Via MSN

It is very common that people allow picture files to come on their MSN Messenger accounts. On June 1, 2007 in a similar instance when millions of users submitted the "yes" option, they downloaded a worm in place of a picture. Shanghaidaily published this on June 2, 2007.

The computer virus Worm/MSN.SendPhoto, self-replicating in nature had entered 15m MSN Messenger accounts of Chinese users by June 1st afternoon. Disguised as an image file the worm shows names as, "Here are my private pictures for you" and "Check out my sexy boobs". As it infected the computers, hackers were able to gain complete access over the stored data.

There are speculations that the worm infected more than 50 percent of the MSN users in China. These users could be mostly white collared business executives, said Cao Linkxiang, a market manager with Beijing Jiangmin. Shanghaidaily published this on June 2, 2007.

When Steven Zhang, an employee in a dot COM firm in his locality received the malicious files, he said that he had recognized the presence of a worm even before warnings came from anti-virus companies. The strange thing is to get 'private photos' from an unknown MSN address, he observed. Shanghaidaily published this on June 2, 2007.

Computers turned into "corpse computers" as they went under remote control. The worm inside a victim's computer spread rapidly by breaking into the address book and sending itself to every other person on the mailing list, reported Beijing Jiangmin New Science Tech, an Internet security company.

The worm spreads other malware too by forcing the infected computers to link to and increase the click rate of the site www.free8.bi*z, said Beijing Rising, a Chinese anti-virus firm. Jiangmin's website provides free downloadable tools to destroy the worm.

Recently Kingsoft, another Chinese anti-virus firm said that Trojan viruses infected 1.4m computers across the country during the May Day holiday over a week. During investigations, Dai Guangjian, an anti-virus specialist at Kingsoft found that the Trojan got active on computers when Internet users generally shop online or play online games during vacations. These Trojan viruses are password-stealing malware.

Related article: Computer Virus Writers Adopt New Strategy

» SPAMfighter News - 6/14/2007