Security

New Breed of Virus Attacks Windows with Allah's Blessing

Could this be just the beginning?

By Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

6th of June 2007, 12:55 GMT

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There is a new Jihad coming to Windows with Allah's blessing. Security company Symantec warned that a new breed of viruses is in the making following on the footsteps the Chinese virus outbreak. According to Symantec, W32.Alnuh is an experiment and in this sense, the first of its kind. Masaki Suenaga, Symantec Security Response Engineer revealed that the security company detected and filed a common virus that diverges

from the general trend due to the language preferences.

W32.Alnuh is an Arabic-aware virus targeting Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000. It was initially detected at the end of May 2007 and it is in essence a worm. Symantec informed W32.Alnuh replicates itself via removable drives and interferes with the functionality of Registry Editor, Task Manager, Command Prompt and Folder Options of Windows Explorer on machines with English and Arabic versions of Windows.

"W32.Alnuh, discovered on June 1, terminates some programs to protect itself. What is new is that it checks for some Arabic window titles to close as well as English ones. W32.Alnuh shows an English message "Please try to open - TaskManager - now" at the beginning. If you run Task Manager on English or Arabic Windows, Task Manager will be promptly terminated. W32.Alnuh closes Windows Task Manager, Registry Editor, Command Prompt and the Folder Options of Windows Explorer. These character strings are both in English and Arabic. The existence of English text made it easier to guess what was intended," Suenaga revealed.

Suenaga additionally cataloged W32.Alnuh as a beginner virus and forecasted that additional malware instances with the same pattern could begin to spread. "There might be more Arabic-aware viruses in the wild than we think, simply because many of us do not notice Arabic words. But we are seeing more Arabic-aware viruses than a year ago. Before it becomes a surge, like the case of Chinese viruses, both security vendors and computer users in Arabic-speaking countries should prepare themselves," he advised.

TAGS:

Windows | virus | worm | Symantec

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