A sizeable wave of spams has been seeded in the last 24 hours, leading with a selection of unpleasant headlines focusing on the recent storms hitting Europe, teenage murderers, Muslim genocide and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The shock subject lines aim to trick recipients into opening the attached file, posing as further details on the story in writing or video. Inside, of course, lurks a selection of malware, mostly downloader trojans including Small variants. The spam seeding has been seen worldwide in considerable numbers.

'We've seen quite a few of these mails arriving at VB,' said John Hawes <mailto:john.hawes@virusbtn.com>, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'Bad news is often as tempting a hook as the more common lures like sex and money, but as usual email users need to stay on their guard and avoid opening unexpected attachments, however intriguing the alleged content.'

Media reports on the spam wave have reached as far as the BBC <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6278079.stm>, while more technical detail is available from F-Secure <http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-012007.html> or Sophos <http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2007/01/malwarestorm.html>.


19 January 2007