New Delhi, Sept 21: E-mails continue to be the hotbed of internet terror with the latest appearance of new worm called "Swen" which attempts to spread through file sharing network attacking Microsoft Windows operating systems.
"W32.swen.a@mm which appeared on September 18 is a
mass-mailing worm that attempts to spread via file-sharing
networks such as Kazaa and IRC and will attempt to de-activate
anti-virus and personal firewall programmes running on the
computers, according to a virus alert by global internet
security solutions company Symantec."
The worm uses its own engine to spread itself and can
arrive as an e-mail attachment while subject body and address
of the e-mail might vary, it said.
The worm exploits vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook and
Outlook Express in an attempt to execute itself when message
is opened.
It can affect systems like Windows 2000, Windows 95, 98
and Windows NT, Windows Me, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.
While Dos, Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft IIS, OS/2, Unix,
Windows 3.X are not affected by the worm, the alert said.
Few months ago, another mass-mailing worm w32.sobigf had
appeared which used to send itself to all the e-mail addresses
it finds in the files with extensions like .txt, .mht, .html,
.eml among others. The worm got de-activated on September 10.
Another worm w32.blaster had appeared recently which
attacked only Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines.
The deactivation date of Swen is not known yet.
