Beware of Breaking News
Del.icio.us
Digg
Google
Spurl
Blink
Furl
Y! MyWeb More...
Add to:
Sponsors:
A new worm uses breaking news -- and a devious technique to keep itself up-to-date -- to dupe recipients into opening attachments, an anti-virus firm said Friday.
U.K.-based security vendor Sophos said that the Crowt.a worm grabs its subject lines, message content, and attachment names from headlines culled in real-time from CNN's Web site. The worm's subject and attachment filename constantly change to mirror the top headline on CNN.com, while the e-mail message's text is also hijacked from CNN.
The idea is to fool recipients into thinking that they're reading a legitimate newsletter or news brief rather than looking at payload-carrying message about to infect their PC.
Crowt.a also slips in a backdoor component that tries to record keystrokes and send the stolen info to the hacker, an element of many worms that are meant not only to give the attacker later access to the infected computer, but also lets them walk off with valuable passwords or bank account information.
"This latest ploy feeds on people's desire for the latest news," said Carole Theriault, a security consultant at Sophos, in a statement. "Many people subscribe to legitimate email news updates...virus writers are always looking for new tricks to entice users into running their malicious code."
Article submitted by: Redhot_2oo3
Last Update: 01-23-2005
Category: News
Current rating: 5.44 by 38 users
| Would you recommend this article to a friend? |
| Not a Chance | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Absolutely |
Related News Stories
(6,938 reads) 12-02-2007
· Don't Fall for Jury Duty Scam(7,006 reads) 07-20-2007
· 500MB Free hosting [No-Ads No-Spamming](11,059 reads) 12-24-2006
· phpBB 2.0.22 and BBtoNuke 2.0.22 released(6,632 reads) 11-12-2006
· Tag Craig Launches Article-Publicity for Webmasters(7,494 reads) 08-05-2006
· Vista hacked at Black Hat.(6,728 reads) 08-04-2006
· Dozen Windows, Office updates coming next week.(6,558 reads) 07-19-2006
· Microsoft Lawsuits Help Protect Consumers.(6,653 reads) 07-18-2006
· Symantec sees an Achilles' heel in Vista.(6,923 reads) 06-20-2006
· GOW Arcade Comptition 17th June - 17th July !! Prize For...(7,126 reads) 06-19-2006
· ResellersPanel.com Launches Private DNS Cluster Packages
Please register or sign-in to post comments.