Christmas computer worm alert
20th December 2001 (Utusan Express)

KUALA LUMPUR Dec 20 - International antivirus solutions provider Trend Micro Inc has warned Internet users of a new medium risk virus known as Worm_Maldal.C, which was detected on the net today.

The worm, also known by several names including W32.Zacker.C and W32.Maldal.C, is similar to the recent Goner worm in that it affects computers running on Micorsoft's Windows operating systems and Microsoft's Outlook e-mail programme.

The worm initially spread in Europe and copies of it began to appear elsewhere in corporate and personal mailboxes, Trend Micro country sales manager Wong Joon Hoong said in a statement here today.

He said the virus is now on a yellow alert status and has been identified as a destructive memory resident worm which is a Visual Basic-compiled Windows executable.

"Due to the distructive nature of this virus, Trend Micro believes it has the potential to migrate to a red alert status," said Wong.

The new worm arrived in an Microsoft's Outlook e-mail with the subject line "Happy New Year". The body of the message says: "Hi I can't describe my feelings. But all I can say is Happy New Year :) Bye."

Wong said that attached to the e-mail would be a file named "Christmas.exe" which contains the malicious computer programming.

"When the attachment is double-clicked, the worm sends itself to all addresses listed in the user's address book and also tries to delete all the files in the Windows directory as well as disabling some keys on the keyboard," he said.

Wong advised users to update their anti-virus programmes to guard against the new worm by downloading the updated virus pattern file from Trend Micro's Web Site at www.antivirus.com.

He cautioned users against opening unexpected attachment files while companies should block many e-mail attachments including files with ".exe" extensions.