14 DAY TRIAL // Security company Sophos has published an advisory concerning one of the most popular instant messaging clients on the web, namely Yahoo Messenger. According to the security notification, there's a new worm spotted in the wild which only targets Yahoo Messenger users and attempts to propagate by sending links of a victim's contacts. W32/VB-DZE has several aliases, as it follows: IM-Worm.Win32.VB.ev, W32/Autorun.worm.h, Win32/VB.NJO worm and WORM_VB.MAB. The worm only affects the Windows operating system as it tries to install itself in the registry of the OS.
Once you get your computer infected with the worm, it attempts to spread its files by sending a link to a copy of it to all the contacts placed in the Yahoo Messenger contact list, Sophos explains. Just like many other Windows infections, the worm tries to modify certain registry entries in order to be sure it is executed once the operating system is fully loaded.
Taking into account that Yahoo Messenger is quite a popular instant messaging client, extra care is recommended when chatting with unknown persons. Moreover, you're advised to ignore messages coming from not trusted sources and avoid clicking on links that look suspicious.
Just like usual, you're advised to keep your antivirus and other security solutions up-to-date with the latest virus definitions and to install the latest patches in order to be sure that none of these infections manage to infiltrate in your system.
Sophos has already integrated protection for this threat into its security software and I guess the other companies will do the same thing anytime soon, if they haven't already done that. However, by applying the security measures mentioned above you do nothing more than to assure that you data remain secure and inaccessible to other people.