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Though the infection
of the worm has been reported mainly in the US, Latin America and
Europe, many in India too have fallen victims
The latest email
virus to hit the Net does not have a stylish name like ‘Anna
Kournikova’ or ‘Naked Wife’, but is lethal enough
to earn a ‘Category 4’ threat from the international body
of computer virus observers, which is potentially high risk.
Researchers
at the Symantec Anti Virus Research Centre are issuing a warning
about the new worm : W32.Badtrans.13312@mm which has the ability
to reply to all unread mails in your email message folders; and
loads a backdoor Trojan on the infected computer.
Though the
infection of the worm has been reported mainly in the US, Latin
America and Europe, many in India too have fallen victims. W32.Badtrans.13312@mm
is basically distributed by email as a .pif or .scr attachment.
It works with all the major email clients.
When the worm
is executed, it loads the backdoor Trojan in the Windows folder.
The Trojan alters the registry key to allow it to run after every
reboot, thereby permitting remote access to the infected machine,
and logs all keystrokes.
The worm also
alters the win.ini so that every time the computer is rebooted,
the worm will wait for five minutes before replying to all unread
email. This is done by attaching itself to the email using file
names like : Pics. ZIP.scr, Images.pif, README.TXT.pif, Card.pif,
Humor.TXT.pif or simply Fun.pif.
The only way
to avoid the virus is to filter out all .pif and .scr email attachments
which will also protect them from other malicious code. "In
fact to be on the safe side, I never see emails with any sort of
attachments, unless they are sent by reliable friends," said
a software professional from Andheri.
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