Stunned because the 'worm' spread via email

Symantec's Security Response department has just warned of a new worm W32.Imsolk.B@mm that is spreading through e-mail at a dizzying speed, attacking hundreds of thousands of computers around the world.

Appearance is like a new form of attack, but in fact they have many similarities with old-fashioned viruses that once spread strongly through email before (2001) such as Nimda, Melissa and Anna Kournikova.

According to the Symantec Hosted Services group (Symantec Depository Service), 26% of the current global spread of viruses is W32.Imsolk.B@mm . Because of the rapid spread of the computer and the large scale of the computer, Symantec raised the warning level for this worm to level 3 (medium) in the 5-level warning scale.

New worms spread through email attacks based on social networking techniques. Still the old method is hidden in traditional e-mails, forcing users to click the link (link) in the email. When a user clicks on this link, the user's computer will download a malicious program file hidden as a PDF file stored on the Internet. And when the user clicks on it, the computer will download and activate the malicious file, whereby the worm will be installed on the victim's computer.

After infiltrating the victim computer, the worm will disable many common security products running on the system (except Norton / Symantec products), sending copies of the original e-mail to all addresses. e-mail found in the address book of the computer is infected. Furthermore, the new worm has the ability to replicate itself to send to open shared drives found on computers on the local network. When the worm replicates itself to another computer, it is only necessary for the user to open a directory that contains a worm that the worm's spread mechanism continues to repeat.

Symantec also recommends that users should regularly update anti-virus software, should not click links or untrusted attachments via email. Network administrators need to configure the mail server to lock or remove emails that contain attachments with the .VBS, .BAT, .EXE, .PIF, and .SCR extensions to prevent viruses from spreading through the file format. SCR.

Currently, Symantec products have been added to the anti-spam and anti-virus mechanisms deposited on email. For example, the solution is stored on the 'cloud', Symantec's products can detect and prevent widespread worms via e-mail before they reach customers' networks without updating. patches or virus definitions in the software.