The persistent worm, ‘Storm’ is back on the scene.
The annoying piece of malware returned to thousands of email inboxes around the world over the Christmas and New Year period.
Naughty But Nice
Naughty, or just downright pornographic, pictures, have long been the staple of the spammer’s campaign.
Over the Christmas period the Storm worm reappeared, offering the hard-up a couple of minutes of fun - a link in a spam email redirects the PC to a website containing a large number of female Santa Clauses, provoactively dressed in a manner that would keep any warm blooded reindeer happy.
Unfortunately, as in life, 2 minutes of fun for a man is often followed by many hours of grief.
In this case, the pain comes from trying to remove Storm from their newly infected system.
E-cards
The redirected link in the spam email takes the clicker to an electronic greetings card.
The email utilises a variety of subjects and body texts, all using a New Year’s or Christmas type message.
All of them redirect to the same malware-bearing website.
Personally, I would recommend deleting any such messages immediately.
Despite the fun and joy of receiving some e-cards, the numerous ways in which they are abused by criminals means that they are something I never read, even if I believe I know the sender.