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The President Is Not Dead
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-11-08
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
If you receive an email claiming either President Bush or Russian president Putin is dead, there may be a worm attached to that message.
Should Bush and Putin decide to execute the Cold War "mutual assured destruction" scenario and send hundreds of nukes at each other's countries, there's a pretty good chance you won't find out about it in your email.
Especially since the EMP resulting from a full-scale nuclear exchange would likely shut down your email along with everyone else's.
Someone seems to think presidential deaths and nuclear war will be just the ticket to slip a virus onto your PC though. Sophos has advised people to be aware of the W32/Dref-N worm attached as an executable file to those messages.
If it slips past your antivirus software, and be executed on the PC, the worm will disable the native Windows firewall on the system. This opens the system to attackers, who will likely follow up with something malicious like keyloggers or spam engines to run on the compromised machine.
"While many of these news hooks may sound totally implausible, it's amazing how many users still allow temptation to get the better of them, and click on the infected file," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"The simple advice is that if you suspect there's a breaking news story, turn on the TV or visit your favorite news website to see if it has any basis in truth."
If it's a nuclear war alert, don't look out the window. Even if you're wearing SPF 100 sunblock and Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses, they won't help against a real detonation.
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Tags: Spam, Virus
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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