** New Virus Aims Low (Information Week)

The latest social engineering attempt by virus writers appears to
be pornography. Another Visual Basic virus, discovered Tuesday
and called W32/Naked@MM, lures potential victims with the subject
line "Naked Wife." The message body reads: "My wife never look
like that! ;-)". It carries an attachment, NakedWife.exe.

People clicking on the forbidden fruit and hoping to watch a
Flash movie will instead end up sending the virus to all E-mail
entries in their Windows address books. The virus then tries to
delete all .bmp, .com, .dll, .exe, .ini, and .log files in the
Windows and Windows\System directories.

Patrick Nolan, a virus researcher with McAfee's Avert Research
Center says that so far, about 18 companies--including some
Fortune 500 firms--have reported infections. "This virus has a
destructive payload," Nolan says.

He says he's unsure whether this virus will spread like other
recent Visual Basic viruses such as the Love Bug. "It's been
about an average virus as far as the number of infections
reported to us today," he says. One of the virus' mitigating
factors is that it requires Visual Basic 6 or higher runtime
files.

Most major antivirus software can detect it, including
McAfee, Sophos, and Symantec. - George V. Hulme

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