A Virus Built For Bloggers?
As a bona fide RSS aggregator addict, I’m always surprised at how many bloggers — and non-bloggers, for that matter — don’t use a news reader. Instead, they visit Google’s news page several times a day or have headlines delivered to their email InBox. Now, the code kiddies are capitalizing on that practice with a virus specifically designed to appeal to those who like email news alerts.
Virus writers have created a worm which poses as breaking news alerts. Crowt-A’s subject line and attachment share the same name, but continually change to mirror the front-page headline on CNN’s website. [...]
Windows users induced into clicking on the infected attachment surrender control of their PCs to crackers. Crowt-A installs a keylogger which captures sensitive data, such as online banking login details, and forwards it to attackers. Infected machines are also turned into relay stations for the worm, spewing copies of it to email addresses harvested from infected PCs.
OK, the link to thes story is in the next blog entry. What the hackers fail to realize is those of us who ignore CNN on cable TV will also ignore CNN via the Internet.
I have gotten email news alerts – there is NEVER an attachment. What’s so hard for me to believe is that people will still open an unexpected attachment without a second thought! For the few who might have only just gotten on the net, and this is the first ever news alert email, I could see them being taken in. But most people have been on the net for more than a single day – they’ve seen all kinds of worms and virii come and go… yet they still open that attachment.
And too there is always a period of time between the release of malware into the wild and new virus and worm signatures… So unless you know it’s a harmless attachment – just don’t open it! Anyone who can’t figure that out will just have to put up with letting hackers control their machines and maybe even some parts of their lives… *sigh*
bravo