Beware of Valentine Day's bug

NI Wire

New Delhi

Thu, 31 Jan 2008: 

If you are using Internet and see the attractive email or link showing St. Valentine’s message of love, Beware of this. Don’t open the mail or not click on the link, this may be malicious malware.

Panda Labs, the security laboratory for detecting and analysing malware for Panda firm has claimed tdetect two types of new love bugs that show the love message of Valentine day’s content and affected badly to the targeted computer.

Before the welcoming of love fest, some computer mischievous have developed the love viruses which show the attractive love messages and images and magnetise the users to click on it, as users click on it, the virus damages the greedy users computer and affect it badly.

According to Panda Security’s, two viruses have been detected having Nuwar.OL and Valentin.E worms containing love message or links.

Nuwar.OL reaches to computer through emails containing written subjects like “I Love You Soo Much”, “Inside My Heart” or “You... In My Dreams.” while Valentin.E appears with containing very similar love messages like “Searching for true Love” or “True Love” with an attached file called “friends4u”, informed Luis Corrons, technical director of Panda Labs.

Elaborating about these viruses, Luis said, “Nuwar.OL reaches to computer via emails and when user open it, the virus downloads the malicious codes in computer files. The page is very simple and looks like a romantic greeting card with a large pink heart.”

“Once it affected the computer, it begins to send out large amount of emails to all the contacts listed in contact folder for spreading further infection.” he said. “This also creates a heavy load on networks and slows down the computer.” he added.

For describing the properties of Valentin.E virus, Corrons said, “Valetine.E virus is also very similar to Nuwar.OL, but difference is that it appears with attached files and if users click on the file, the copy of virus code download on the computer with .scr extension.”

“If user runs the files, the program code shows a new virtual desktop background to deceive them. It also makes several copies of itself on the computer and sends out emails with copies of itself from the infected computer to spread and infect more users.”, Corrons added.

Describing these types of hazardous firmware, Corrons said, “Year after year we see the appearance of several malware strains that use St Valentine’s Day as bait to attract users…..This indicates that cyber crooks are still reaping the benefits of this technique and many people still fall into the trap.”

“Both cases are clear examples of social engineering techniques used to spread malware. They use attractive subjects like Valentine’s Day greeting cards, romantic desktop themes, etc. to entice users to run attachments or click links that ultimately download malware onto their computers”, he said.

Panda securities have also described ‘how to escape these malwares?’ by giving some tips. These are:

• Do not open any emails that come from unknown sources. • Do not click any links included in email messages, even though they may come from reliable sources. It is better to type them in the address bar • Do not run attached files that come from unknown sources. Stay on the alert for files that claim to be Valentine’s greeting cards, romantic videos, etc. • Have an effective security solution installed, capable of detecting both known and new malware strains