Sophos has warned of a widespread spam campaign that poses as a breaking news report, but is really an attempt to lure computer users into being infected by a Trojan horse and attacked by hackers.
The distribution has been so widespread that since midnight GMT the Trojan has accounted for over two thirds of all malware reports seen at Sophos's global network of monitoring stations, accounting for an infection rate of 1 in 200 of all e-mails being sent across the net, the firm said.
Attached to the e-mails are files with names such as Full Clip.exe, Full Story.exe, Full Video.exe, Read More.exe, Video.exe which contain malicious code.
"Whoever is behind this spam campaign has generated an aggressive storm of e-mail in the last 12 hours, and some inboxes will be feeling battered by the deluge. On average, 1 in every 200 e-mails that people have received since midnight are likely to be infected by this Trojan horse," explained Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Receiving or reading the e-mails themselves does not mean that you will be infected. However, users must be very careful not to click on the attached file inside the e-mails as that will install a Trojan horse on their computer and put your PC in peril."
"Bad weather has been making headlines news across Europe in the last couple of days, with a number of accidental deaths caused by the high winds reported," continued Cluley. "Hackers are deliberately exploiting public interest in breaking news stories like this in their attempt to silently infect innocent users' PCs."
