- Joined
- Mar 5, 2002
- Messages
- 25,739
- Reaction score
- 1,204
Kaspersky Lab has found a new breed of computer worm that spreads through instant messaging (IM) clients. These include Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Paltalk Messenger, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and the XFire client used by online gamers.
The research team have found four variants which affect Windows systems. When one of these worms, generically named IM-Worm.Win32.Zeroll, infects a client, it searches for the contact list and sends itself in disguise to all the addressees. The recipient sees a message from the infected machine with a link to an image which turns out to be a malicious file.
A distinctive feature of the worm is it can send a message in one of 13 different languages to fool the recipient. Though the languages include English and German, Kaspersky has found it to be mainly active in countries where Spanish or Portuguese is spoken: Mexico, Brazil, Peru and the US.
The team also noted that it now appeared to be spreading to Africa, India and Europe, especially Spain.
Read the full story ...
The research team have found four variants which affect Windows systems. When one of these worms, generically named IM-Worm.Win32.Zeroll, infects a client, it searches for the contact list and sends itself in disguise to all the addressees. The recipient sees a message from the infected machine with a link to an image which turns out to be a malicious file.
A distinctive feature of the worm is it can send a message in one of 13 different languages to fool the recipient. Though the languages include English and German, Kaspersky has found it to be mainly active in countries where Spanish or Portuguese is spoken: Mexico, Brazil, Peru and the US.
The team also noted that it now appeared to be spreading to Africa, India and Europe, especially Spain.
Read the full story ...