Instant Message Worms Get Mean
‘For the longest time, worms circulating over instant messaging networks like AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo!, MSN and ICQ were considered more childish than harmful, threats that for the most part simply spread themselves to everyone in a victim’s buddy list.
As evidenced by a recent spate of particularly nasty IM worms, however, those days are fading fast. The latest IM worm to make the news — dubbed IM.GiftCom.All by security firm IMLogic — arrives in an instant message from someone who has you on their buddy list, urging you to click on a link to view a Santa Claus file. While the link appears to display an image of jolly ol’ St. Nick, it quietly installs a rootkit on the victim’s PC as the image is being displayed. The worm also tries to disable anti-virus and firewall software and drops a keylogger on infected machines.’
Read more at Security Fix - Instant Message Worms Get Mean
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