3monkeys

Being a Linux user, I rarely have to worry about viruses, worms or spyware, though sometimes, as with the recent GMail hack, I do. Therefore, I subscribe to several computer security related RSS feeds and this one scrolled by earlier today, ‘Happy New Year’ Worm Gains Ground.

InformationWeek reports:
The “Happy New Year” worm-carrying spam that first appeared last week accounted for 12% of all e-mail traffic over the weekend and continues to spread, antivirus vendors said Tuesday.

The worm, dubbed “Tibs” by Kaspersky Lab but also known as a “Nuwar” variant (Trend Micro) and “Mixor.q” (Symantec), appears as a file attachment named “postcard.exe” in messages with “Happy New Year” subject headings. Users who launch the executable will infect their PCs with rootkits, keyloggers, and other malware.

What is particularly interesting to me is the volume of traffic this is generating. 12% translates into 1 out of every 8 emails is carrying this virus. So for those of you that have yet to make the switch to Linux, please beware and delete any email the exhibits the properties discussed in the article.

Until next time.

-3Monkeys

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.