Ilaina Jonas
NEW YORK: A newly discovered computer worm, sent under guise of a holiday
greeting, has popped up in the United States and Europe and, if activated, could
destroy personal computers, experts said on Wednesday.
The Reeezak worm enters a computer as an e-mail message in Microsoft Corp.
Outlook with a subject line "Happy New Year" and an attachment, "Christmas.exe",
which a recipient may think, is a Christmas card.
The worm can disable selective keys on the infected computer's keyboard and
delete all the files found in the Windows System Directory, rendering the
computer inoperable, said Ian Hameroff, director of antivirus solutions for
Computer Associates International Inc.
Because the worm, a self-propagating virus, sends itself to every e-mail in
an address book, recipients are more likely to open the attachment because it
appears to come from a recognized source.
"If it were launched in June, many people would be suspicious of it, but
since it is the holidays and you may be expecting to receive such greetings from
friends and colleagues you may trust this and receive a gift you aren't exactly
expecting," Hameroff said.
Hameroff recommends recipients of e-mail messages that come with unsolicited
attachments call the sender to verify they sent it before opening the attachment
and possibly activating a virus.
Reeezak first appeared in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe and
was detected later in the United States, where Hameroff guessed thousands of
computers have been infected.
Computer Associates rated the worm a medium to high risk. Symantec Corp.'s
Security Response unit had not yet rated it Wednesday afternoon and McAfee.com
had it at a low risk threat.
A message in the body of the Reeezak e-mail reads (with the first word
misspelled):
"Hii
I can't describe my feelings
But all i can say is
Happy New Year :)
bye"
Other names for the worm are: W32.Zacker.C@mm and W32.Maldal.C@mm.
(C) Reuters Limited.