Submission + - Big Virus Outbreak Today - 60 Times Normal Levels
An anonymous reader writes: Postini which processes more than 2 billion messages a day, is tracking a massive virus outbreak today that is set to be the largest attack on email in more than a year. Initial reports from Postini's global data centers indicate that today's attacks have driven virus levels 60 times higher than average daily levels on the Internet.
Today's attack includes two variants. Emails with "love" related subject lines and an executable attachment that contains a Trojan virus, and emails with Worm Alert! in the headline containing an attached .zip file with an infected payload. Earlier in the week a similar attack took place with the subject lines focused on "missile attacks" starting World War III. These attacks are all variations of the same malware family as the "Storm Worm" attacks that plagued Email users around the world earlier in the year.
When a user clicks on the attached executable, a rootkit is installed that attempts to hide its presence from virus scans as well as disable existing anti-virus applications. Then it will connect to a peer-to-peer network where it can upload data including personal information from the infected computer as well as download additional malware. The infected computer then becomes a bot-net zombie that can be used to send spam and issue other attacks. At the same time that it is connecting to the P2P network, the virus will search the computer's hard drive for email addresses and begin replicating itself by sending emails to the addresses that it finds.
These attacks make this the most active week for Internet email attacks in more than a year.
