Virus : Social Engineering
One of the most dangerous weapons that can use a virus-ups to achieve a rapid spread is the use of so-called "social engineering techniques". These techniques include using a complaint to attract user attention and get you open a file that has just received and that in fact contains a malicious code.
Usually, this type of techniques usually yield good results the creators of viruses as they get greater distribution of their creations. For this reason, every time they are used more frequently.
One of the tricks used for this purpose is to include names or phrases of items that at the time of its creation, are now of utmost so that a greater interest in the message sent. Without going any further, one of the latest viruses appeared on the scene has been the Prestige, a new email worm that refers to the oil tanker disaster of the same name. In this case, the email received by the user and which is subject: "Inedit photos of the Prestige at the bottom of Atlanta", carries an attachment that supposedly provides access to photographic materials of great value. However, what really gets that includes a computer virus.
One of the facts that has caused more commotion in recent decades has been the terrorist attack suffered by the city of New York on September 11, 2001. When delivering its first anniversary, some hackers also used to develop several computer viruses associated with these attacks. For example, appeared a new worm called Nedal, Laden read upside down, which spreads by e-mail and some chat programs like mIRC. In addition, like all mail worm, had the ability to order sent to all contacts in the address book from Outlook program.
Other current events, like the first centennial of the independence of the Philippines, June 12, 1898, or the World Cup in France 1998 have also served as a hook for thousands and thousands of Internet users from infecting their computers across the network.
Celebrities :
Another of the forms used by the creators of viruses to draw the attention of Internet users is using the name of a celebrity, whether the world of sport, politics or entertainment to attract a larger number of victims. One of the most famous examples of this type is the Anna Kournikova virus, an Internet worm, discovered on February 11, 2001, which takes advantage of this to make users believe that this is a graphic file with JPG extension When in reality it is a malicious code.
Also, singers like Jennifer Lopez, Shakira and Thalia, also had the dubious honor to serve as an inspiration for computer viruses. For example, malicious code of the singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, discovered on May 31, 2001, was a new variant of the worm's famous Love Letter, and as a novelty, referring to the artist Puerto Rican, very popular in around the world.
However, the world of politics has escaped neither of these attacks and characters like George Bush or have also been victims of these creations. Chavez, a worm discovered on June 3, 2002, has the peculiarity that can be spread by any means, whether infected diskettes, sending a direct mail using SMTP servers themselves or through the port 25, via FTP.
"Happy Christmas"
Upon arriving Christmas is usual that proliferate e-mails they attached small graphics applications, in the form of congratulations Easter or the New Year. Aware of this, the creators of viruses used to generate codes that under an innocent appearance, allude to Christmas to fool the user and get that run the file containing the malicious code, thereby contributing to its spread.
Among the worms that exploit this resource highlights Klez.l, due to their ability to vary message subjects on which they are sent. This feature, which hampers their identification by users, allows you to generate the affairs of e-mails in which spreads from the words that appear in any of the files in the computer that has affected. Because the dates on which we stand, many files users refer, explicitly, to Christmas. This explains that in recent days have been reported incidences of e-mails that include the option "I" Klez, which has used it as a matter of text messages such as: "Happy Christmas", "Happy Christmas excite," " Happy Christmas funny ", etc..
For its part, the code Bride.B also takes Christmas to attract the attention of the user including the following sentence: "I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year".
To prevent these viruses from infecting Christmas greetings in camouflaged equipment, the Centre for Alert Antivirus advised not lower our guard and extreme precautions with e-mail messages that are received. Also recommend regularly update their security solutions and avoid running attachments to e-mail messages without having previously discussed with a virus.
