I just got an honest-to-god virus in my Daily News e-mail — it looks like an e-mail from Microsoft offering a download of Internet Explorer 7, but if you mouse over the graphic (DO NOT CLICK ON IT). you can see that the link doesn’t go to Microsoft but to something with the words “gc-music” in it.
The “sender” (and yes, it is easy to put any address in the “from” field) is admin(“at”)microsoft.com — and the subject line is “Internet Explorer 7 Downloads.”
Whatever you do, DON’T CLICK ON THE GRAPHIC. For more on the virus, go to this PC World page:
The e-mails carry the subject line “Internet Explorer 7 Downloads” and appear to come from admin@microsoft.com. They include a blue, Microsoft-style graphic offering a download of IE 7 beta 2. Clicking the graphic will download an executable file called IE 7.exe.
The file is actually a new virus called Virus.Win32.Grum.A, and security experts were still analyzing it Friday to see what it does. Sophos PLC said it can spread by e-mailing itself to contacts in a user’s address book. The virus tampers with registry files to ensure it gets installed, and it tries to download additional files from the Internet, said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant for Sophos.
Other specifics were unknown yet, but such viruses often install a keystroke logger to steal personal information, and establish a network of infected computers to launch a denial of service attack, Cluley said.
The report also says that this virus is poorly detected by current antivirus programs, and that it affects only Windows users.
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