'Happy New Year' worm is spreading strongly

During the transfer days between the old year and the new year, hackers have released a computer worm (worm) that spreads very fast, by hitting the user's psychology when placing dispersal emails. This worm is a very attractive title: ' Happy New Year '.

That's a warning from VeriSign, which provides information about network security vulnerabilities. Accordingly, emails that carry a computer with the title ' Happy New Year ' contain an attachment, postcard.exe or postcard.zip .

If you accidentally open this attachment, the worm will be downloaded and installed on your computer a lot of different destructive virus variants like Tibs, Nwar, Banwarum and Glowa, and infect all computers. install Windows.

'Happy New Year' worm is spreading strongly Picture 1

Users need to be cautious when opening attachments in emails of Happy New Year ( Source: VNN )

Once successfully infiltrated into the computer, the worm will look for tools to send emails and begin to spread the Happy New Year to other computers. According to Verisign experts, the rate of spread of this worm is extremely fast, at least in a large network of 5 emails per second.

Security experts say, although the new virus is similar to Warezov Trojan, which once raged on the Internet in early December, it is still a new and undiscovered variant for the until December 28th.

VeriSign's Lab iDefense analyzed the virus's vulnerability Happy New Year and discovered many types of worms and the installed Trojans following it on the infected computer. The new worm has used more than 160 email servers (equivalent to 160 domains) to distribute spam containing computer worms.

In the year-end holidays, there are always a series of emails sent back and forth, and this year is no exception. The rapid spread of email types containing computer worms in the past few days shows that users still . like to open emails of this type. Since then, it is not surprising that hackers successfully exploited the psychology of liking receiving e-cards of friends and relatives to launch the Happy New Year worm.

Anti-virus software maker McAfee recommended to people during this holiday period to be wary of worms and viruses spread through email. Also on Wednesday this week (December 27), McAfee also informed its customers about a dangerous type of attachment called Christmas + Blessing-4.ppt. Once downloaded, the program will help hackers remotely access infected computers.

Just like many other new trojans, current virus scanning software doesn't recognize the Happy New Year worm. Therefore, experts recommend that users be very careful when opening attachments in emails.

Ken Dunham, head of the Rapid Response research team at VeriSign's iDefense Labs, said: ' The new year is when there are many risks of security threats, because then the level of protection is the lowest that the user often tend to open emails with content related to the holiday season '.

Kim Thoa