More new year email worm woe

Another worm has been reportedly been hiding in attachments to emails that have been sent in massive numbers to internet users worldwide.

Yesterday Web User reported that a variation the Warezov Trojan had been hidden in emails with a subject line reading 'Happy New year' and an attachment with the file name postcard.exe or postcard.zip.

Now security researchers are warning of another mass-mailing worm that uses a similar tactic to get recipients to open an attachment and inadvertantly infect their computers. The Dref-V worm was found in attachments named greetingpostcard.exe on emails with subject lines such as 'Happy New Year!', 'Fun Filled New Year!' and 'Happy 2007' by security firm Sophos.

"Dref has been spammed out far and wide in the last few days, and there's a danger that in the rush to get through the backlog of holiday emails, people might return to work and accidentally launch the malicious attachment," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos.

"Its social engineering tactics are not new, so most businesses should have adequate defenses in place to tackle the worm," she continued.

Meanwhile, another security company, Kaspersky Lab, has said that the Warezov family of worms accounted for more than one-third of all viruses reported in December 2006.

http://www.sophos.com/
http://www.kaspersky.com/

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