Naked Wife virus exposes unwary users

IT managers have been warned about a new virus contained in an email entitled 'Fw:Naked Wife' that renders infected systems unusable.

The W32/Naked email worm arrives disguised as a flash movie attached to an email containing the text 'My wife never look like that! ;-)'.

In the background, while the flash movie is 'loading', the worm attempts to send itself to everyone in the user's Microsoft Outlook address book, and will try to delete several system files, including .BMP, .COM, .DLL, .EXE, and .INI files in the Windows and Windows\System directories.

The virus will leave a system unusable, and requiring a reinstallation. So far, although it has had a significant impact in the US, Naked Wife has failed to penetrate more than handful of UK and European companies, according to Network Associates. It does, however, contain two new tricks previously unseen in mass mail viruses.

Jack Clark, European antivirus product manager at Network Associates, commented: "It takes the infected user's name from their email address and uses it to sign the email sent to new victims, giving the message more credibility."

"Naked Wife also shows a video image whilst going through the address book and mailing itself out, which is a first for a mass mailer. Users should update [antivirus definitions] now, and by doing so will block the virus at the gateway," he added.

The virus follows earlier viruses that have pretended to be love letters, pictures of Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova, and even the Pikachu Pokemon character, which attempt to tap into popular culture to replicate quickly.

"Do people really forget so quickly?" asked Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus company Sophos.

"Just four weeks after the Kournikova virus breakout we see another virus using a similar trick to fool users into running it. Users need to ask themselves if the promise of a naughty video clip is really worth risking the data on their hard drive," he said.