14 DAY TRIAL // Every holiday is another great reason for virus writers to get creative. Everybody seems to be sending Christmas, Thanks Giving, Easter, and whatever other holiday you can think of...cards, so this time you could justify receiving an email from someone you don't actually remember as a sign of old age and you'll just go ahead and open the message hoping to find someone wished you well.
Unfortunately, the latest spree of viruses with an e-card cover happened just last Christmas, as mass-mailing Zafi-D worm, which disguised itself as a Christmas greeting, infected more than one in every ten emails sent in December and part January. The worm, which spread in a file attached to email messages containing the text "Happy holidays", managed to account for 72 per cent of all virus reports to email security registered by security company Sophos.
According to anti-virus experts, Valentine's Day is a subject most often used by the creators of nasty email viruses to wreak havoc and infiltrate Inboxes. Sophos has already discovered two new viruses that bring loving greetings via email attachments and peer-to-peer networks.
The Kipis-H worm, which uses "Happy Valentine's Day" in subject lines, shuts down anti-virus protection, installs a backdoor Trojan and sends itself to all contacts in the address book.
The second piece of malware is the VBSWG-D worm, which spreads via email with the subject line "First Love Story...!!!" and a file called FirstLove.VBS. Today it will display the message "Happy F***ing Valentine...!!!" and then shut down the computer.
Panda Software announced the appearance of another worm, Verona; this one spreads by email and has two attachments called MYJULIET.CHM and MYROMEO.EXE to trick surfers.