Sorry, No Naked World Cup

You've got to give attackers credit: They know how to make users click on an email.

This week, a new worm dubbed W32/Sixem-A is circulating through e-mailboxes all over the world, promising the two most frequently surfed topics on the Web: sports and nudity. The bug, which usually arrives in an email carrying the subject line "Naked World Cup game set," has reportedly infected a few enterprises, though most antivirus vendors have patched the problem with updates.

W32/Sixem-A is a messaging worm that harvests email addresses found on the infected computer and then uses its own email engine to send itself to those systems as well, according to vulnerability reports. It behaves much like the other "World Cup" worm, Banwarum-A, which promised tickets to the games last month. (See New Worm Promises World Cup Tickets.)

The worm, which is triggered when a user clicks on an executable file disguised as a JPG photo attachment, also has been seen carrying email subject lines such as "Soccer fans killed five teens," "Crazy soccer fans," and "My tricks for you."

Antivirus vendors such as Sophos and Symantec have rated the worm's threat as "low." Widely spread throughout an enterprise, the bug could overload email systems and affect network performance, but so far the infection has not reached enough computers to create much of a problem, they say.

World Cup play has continued throughout the spread of the worm, and so far, most of the players have kept their clothes on.

— Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading

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