“Storm Worm” Virus Rages Across The Web

Virus programmers have been quick to capitalize on the chaos and fatalities caused by severe storms across Europe.

by Helen Leggatt

According to Finnish virus security company F-Secure, a “..significant network attack was launched globally in the early hours of Thursday morning using news of a European storm as the hook to lure the unsuspecting.”

The email contains an attachment with names such as "Full Clip.exe", "Read More.exe", "Video.exe" or "Full Story.exe" and a subject line relating to the numbers killed and chaos caused by the wild weather.

"What makes this exceptional is the timely nature of the attack," said Mikko Hypponen, head of research at F-Secure, referring to how quickly the virus appeared after the events.

The virus, called a “Trojan”, creates a backdoor to the infected users PC, which gives the virus developers access to the machine, which in turn could lead to data theft and spam attacks.

Using a tragedy or sensational headline isn’t a new way to trick recipients in to opening an email, but the speed at which Storm Worm was modified and distributed has surprised many.