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| News archive about antivirus software, virus threats, trojans |
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February 2005
Successful social engineering helps worm spread -- Posted by Igor_Donchenko on Monday, February 28 2005
The FBI is warning users about a fraudulent email making the rounds this week. The latest version of Email-Worm.Win32.Sober arrives in a variety of letters in German and English targeted into tricking users into opening the attachments.
Sober.k carries a complete set of tools, enabling it to spread effectively. Texts are written in either English or German, with the choice of language depending on the domain suffix. The worm contains a number of different texts, ranging from a warning about possible criminal proceedings from the FBI to a purported patch from Microsoft.
In this case, the FBI letters upset a number of people, since the letter seemed to accuse them of committing cyber crimes: "we have logged your IP-address on more than 40 illegal Websites. Important: Please answer our questions! The list of questions are attached."
While social engineering tactics have been used successfully by virus writers for years, many users still get confused by new versions. It is important to remember that today, no reputable company, organization or government body will ask you to reveal personal data or send important documents in unsolicited emails.
The rule of thumb is, if you didn't contact them, it is 99.99% certain that they wouldn't choose these methods to contact you. Therefore, do NOT click on an attachment, or follow a link from an e-mail, unless you were expecting it: even if the source looks innocent, it is most likely a threat.
Source: http://www.viruslist.com
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