A new variant of the mass-mailing Sober worm has been discovered and is spreading among consumer PC users, security experts said Monday.
Sober.P, which operates in a similar fashion to other Sober worms, uses a subject header in an e-mail to try to entice people into opening an attachment. The virus then harvests e-mail addresses from the victim and directs a barrage of spam to those addresses.
"The social engineering has been very effective," said Craig Schmugar, virus research manager for McAfee Avert. "They will use German messages for German Windows users. They tell them they've won tickets to the World Cup, and that has been an effective (ploy) for that region."
The variant also has been compressed to make it more difficult for security software to identify when scanning a system, Schmugar said.
"Sober.P is very similar to Sober.M. They come on quick, then quickly die off," he said.
McAfee has given the worm a "medium" risk rating for home PC users.
Join the conversation
Comment replyThe posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited. Click here to review our Terms of Use.
The company says that manufacturing facilities in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China, will be inspected by a group "dedicated to ending sweatshop conditions in factories worldwide."
A group calling itself Evil Shadow Team reportedly hacked into Microsoft's online store in India, stealing usernames and passwords of the site's customers.
The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 S6500 could make its debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month, according to a leaked promotional image.
The space agency powers down its last System Z machine, years after IBM stopped selling them for the mathematical calculation jobs for which NASA originally bought them.
Join the conversation