14 DAY TRIAL // Generally, the email spam is extremely dangerous because it can deliver malicious files able to conduct attacks over a vulnerable system. In the past, there were reported numerous problems created by spam, the unwanted messages being able to cause even death. This week, the Internet revealed another threat for all the email owners after numerous messages were attempting to infect the computers with a Trojan.Peacomm. According to the security company Symantec, this type of infection was detected in January 2007, but it was quickly removed.
The virus was distributed as an attachment, the computer being infected once the user runs the files compressed into the archive.
"The attachment is a password-protected ZIP file. It contains a trojan horse that will install itself on the system as a system driver and then will download other malicious programs from various computers on the Internet. The file contained within the ZIP file will be detected as Trojan.Packed.13. If the user executes this file it will create another file that will be detected as Trojan.Peacomm," Symantec sustained in the security advisory.
At this time, there are multiple solutions to avoid the infection with the Trojan file. Best of all is of course the installation of a powerful antivirus and the update of its database to the latest version. If you already own an antivirus solution, you can update its virus database and scan all your incoming messages. Of course, you're always able to avoid opening email attachments that are often infected with many types of viruses. For example, the spam messages are extremely dangerous as they often contain malicious links redirecting the users to infected websites or even requiring them to download the attachments.