Symantec Says Worm Attacks E-Mail, Instant Messages

[BigBlueBall News]

Dow Jones Newswires

April 9, 2002

LOS ANGELES -- Symantec Corp. said it has found a new mass-mailing worm that attacks computers by sending multiple e-mails via instant-messaging services over the Internet and Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook e-mail program.

The mass-mailing worm sends itself to all e-mail addresses in Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook address book.

It also uses the "Internet Relay Chat" and AOL Time Warner Inc.’s (AOL) AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, service to spread itself. Symantec’s security response team has assigned the worm a rating of 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most serious.

This worm, which spreads from computer to computer automatically, as opposed to a virus which spreads from file to file, isn’t as serious a threat as last year’s malicious computer worms, named Code Red and Nimbda, which held higher numerical rankings, Symantec said.

It doesn’t cause any damage to a personal computer, but is described as a "nuisance" because of the repeated e-mail files sent to others in the address book. It also is spread, to a lesser extent, via the instant messaging systems when files are downloaded, Symantec said.

With Microsoft’s Outlook program, the e-mail with the worm has an attachment with the message, "Psecure20x-cgi-install.version.6.01.bin.hx.com," with a period in the subject and message lines of the e-mail sent.

With AOL Instant Messenger, the worm waits for you to connect to AIM. It then sends one-line messages to your AIM contacts including "btw, "download this," "I wanted to show you this," and "please check out."

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