A newly discovered worm dubbed “Gpic.aol” and being transported via AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) arrives as an instant message along the lines of “damn this looks just like me lol” and proffering a link which claims to be a link to pictures.google.com
However, as soon as the unwitting recipient clicks on that link, it actually takes them to the payload site – currently believed to be newpeople.no-ip.in – where it downloads the Gpic.aol worm onto the victim’s website and then starts the process all over again.
Francis DeSouza, CEO of IMlogic, explains that it’s only a matter of time before some of these AIM worms do something much more damaging than just replicating themselves.
Explains DeSouza, “Your e-mail client can only do so many things. Your IM client is actually much more functional and much more powerful, and because much of the functionality is real-time functionality, threats can propagate over IM much faster than over e-mails.”
The best defense? As always, if you aren’t 100% sure of the sender and origin, just don’t click.
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hey.. a friend of mine sent me that hyperlink and i clicked on it thnkn it was a pic of him and it turns out it was the worm.. i keep looking for sites to find and download the worm-fix thngy but i cant find any.. u got ne help for me??any sites you know i can go to and download the fixer..i jus got this damn PC and i don hav antivirus on it yet..
hey Emily,
go here and download A Squared….it will find alotta malware and is free…also try ewido security suite…it’s totally free for 14 days, then if ya don’t wanna buy it, ya have to run it like any other manual anti-malware utility.
but honestly?
the best thing is to not ever open stuff from folks ya don’t know, im or email…what i often do if i get hit with an unexpected IM is i open another window of my own and contact the “sender”…9 out of ten times, if ya get someone they will either deny im’ing you, orthere just won’t be anyone…freeks them out , too..
good luck sister.
peace
pinkster
So what should you do if you got the worm??