Porn worm spreads as new year greeting

Security experts have discovered a mass-mailing worm which offers an unusual happy new year message in the form of a pornographic photograph.

Wurmark-D (W32/Wurmark-D) travels as an attachment via email pretending to be a seasonal greeting, security firm Sophos warned.

If an unwitting recipient opens the file the virus is launched and begins by displaying a graphic image of nude men and women contorting to form the words 'happy new year'.

At this point the malicious worm is installing behind the scenes, and forwarding itself to other computer users.

"Once activated, this worm will harvest your computer hunting for other email addresses to send itself to, and try and turn off antivirus software," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

"Anyone who forgets to exercise caution before running this unsolicited email attachment could be in for a rude awakening."

Emails sent by the Wurmark-D worm have the following characteristics:

Subject: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Message body: All the best in new year from our family here is a litle attachment to make you smile in new year email me back haha...

Alternatively the worm may have the following wording:

Subject: MARY CHRISTMAS from our family
Message body: All the best in new year and christams from our family i was lauging like mad when i saw it!

Attached to the email is a Zip file containing a file with one of the following names: Sexy_new_year.scr, HOT_NEW_YEAR.scr, Marry_christmas.scr, with_love.scr, From_my_hart.scr, new_year.scr, and Hot_new_year.scr.

"People coming into work after an extended holiday, and possibly facing a few thousand emails in their inbox, should be careful not to fall for the confidence tricks often used by computer viruses," said Cluley.

Although there have only been a small number of reports of the Wurmark-D worm in the wild, security firms have warned that computer users must ensure that antivirus software is up-to-date.

More information on Wurmark-D is available here