A serious virus attack has started

Last week, the worm, known as the Storm Worm, once again gained strength and launched a global attack, causing viral activity to rise to sixty times its usual.

The Storm Worm first appeared in January when it tried to use the news of European storms to deceive users and infect computers. The worm spread very quickly even then and has appeared on the Internet several times since. The virus statistics showed as early as last week that the pest had begun to try its strength again, with the result that it had started to multiply significantly by the end of the week. He did all this with such intensity that, according to VeriSign, due to the re-emergence of the Storm Worm, the most active week of the past year in terms of the spread of viruses had to be booked. Postini also confirmed a significant number of worm attacks, saying statistics show a 60-fold increase in global virus activity last week from an average week.

The latest variant of the Storm Worm – similarly to its previous versions – spreads in e-mails. The subject of infected emails can be different, but the most common is "Worm Alert!" contains text. The attachment of the letters contains a file with an exe or a zip extension, which immediately activates the worm when it starts. After that, the malware tries to hide itself from antiviruses by installing a rootkit component. It then shuts down security software, exposing computers to additional threats.

Storm Worm has the ability to download malicious files from the Internet that can even serve as an update to the worm. It is also capable of uploading confidential data to remote servers. In order to spread through e-mails, it looks for email addresses in files with different extensions on infected computers.

An additional threat from the worm, Postini and VeriSign said, is that it instantly turns infected computers into zombies that become part of botnets. These PCs can then be used to send large amounts of unsolicited email (spam), among other things.

Storm Worm can be protected by using antivirus scanners, updating them, and handling emails carefully.