Be Aware of These Two New Worms!

There are two new worms making the rounds these days. One plays on your fear of having hidden pornography on your computer...the other on your sympathy for tsunami victims.

The first is a new mass-mailing worm that tries to spread itself by fooling users into believing that they have pornographic content on their PCs. The "Baba-C" worm travels by e-mail and includes the words "Windows Evidence Checker has found XXX material on your computer." The e-mail claims that people can clear their PCs of this material by running a program called "Evidence Cleaner" attached to the message, but does not actually look for porn. When activated, this program runs malicious code that allows hackers access to the data on the computer.

The second worm, also spread by e-mail, poses as a plea for aid to help the victims of last month's Asian tsunami disaster. The worm appears with the subject line: "Tsunami donation! Please help!" and invites recipients to open an attachment called "tsunami.exe," which, if opened, will forward the virus to other Internet users. It could also initiate a denial-of-service attack against a German hacking Web Site, in which the site's server would be bombarded with messages, putting it out of action.

While using the tsunami disaster to spread a virus marks a new low for virus writers, this virus is not the first attempt to take advantage of people's sympathies for the victims. Another worm earlier this month spread the message that the tsunami was God's revenge on "people who did bad on earth."

There have also been a number of mass e-mails sent out in an attempt to steal money, many of them versions of the so-called Nigerian Letter scam, in which readers are invited to reply with their details, apparently in order to help transfer large sums of money and receive a cut themselves.

One appears to be from a wealthy Thai merchant suffering from a fatal disease who has lost his family in the tsunami disaster and needs someone to collect millions of U.S. dollars from a European security firm to distribute it to charities.

"I need a God-fearing and trustworthy person that will be able to travel to Europe, to collect this deposit from the security company," the mail reads.