A new AIM worm discovered this week actually interacts with you and appears to chat with you in an attempt to convince you that the file it is offering, clarissa17.pif is not a virus.
The worm, being called “IM.Myspace04.AIM”, responds to AIM messages from you with such phrases as “lol no its not its a virus”. No word yet on other specific phrases, but still, this is plenty sneaky. And if a user happened to ask the worm “is this a virus”, “lol no its not its a virus” is likely to succeed in duping at least some of the users some of the time.
IM.Myspace04.AIM is the first known virus which takes advantage of this particular bit of social engineering, and security companies believe that it is the advance guard for a new wave. Explains Andrew Burton, director of product development for IM Logic, “This is a first. We will see one or two instances of an attack, there will be a refinement and then there will be an outbreak.”
So once the virus writers figure out how effective this is (and I’m sure that it will, unfortunately, be plenty affective), you can expect more sophisticated responses in the future.
So what’s the best thing that you can do to protect yourself in the face of this new wave of “smart” viruses?
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Be aware – be very aware.
Recommended reading
Network Security for Dummies
Recommended installing
Norton AntiVirus 2006
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