Experts at Sophos have warned users about a new widespread email worm, posing as tickets for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. In the last 24 hours the W32/Sober-N worm has swept to the top of the most widespread virus chart, accounting for 62% of all viruses seen by Sophos' monitoring stations around the world.
Like earlier versions of the Sober worm, the bilingual virus can travel in both English and German language emails as a malicious attached file. The worm can use a variety of different subject lines and message bodies, and when sent in German can pretend to be an email from FIFA saying the recipient has won free tickets for the 2006 soccer World Cup. However, if the user opens the attached file they will become infected by the worm, and it will mass-mail itself to other email addresses found on the infected PC.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos said,
"Many people will be eager to attend one of the biggest sporting events in the world next year, and may think its worth the risk of opening the email attachment just in case the prize is for real. Computer users who don't practise safe computing will feel as sick as a parrot, and will only be passing this worm onto other unsuspecting victims.
The Sober-N worm accounts for almost 2 in every 3 viruses travelling across the Internet at the moment. Although anti-virus protection is available it seems there must be many home users who have been complacent and are allowing their PCs to belch out more and more infected emails. Everyone should consider putting in place automatic anti-virus updates, and a policy of blocking dangerous attachments at the email gateway. Anyone who assumed that we had seen the end of email viruses is being given an important wake-up call by this worm."
Since it first emerged on Monday afternoon, the worm has gained momentum infecting more and more computer users. Because of the amount of email which can be sent by the worm computer users may find their mailboxes are filling up, and companies may discover that their email takes longer to arrive.
As ever, we recommend you keep your anti-virus software up to date.
UPDATE: Sophos publish Sober-N recovery details
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