Spam Email Question

[NY Mane]

Anyone else receiving spam from "admin" with a subject, "_christmas_gift_"

I've received like 10 in less than an hour. I won't open them though...automatic deletion

[SecretStash]

that is a serious virus threat


Christmas Gift virus hits one in 10 emails
Zafi-D spreading rapidly around the world

Robert Jaques, vnunet.com Dec 2006

ADVERTISEMENTThe Zafi-D worm (W32/Zafi-D), discovered earlier this week posing as a Christmas greeting, is spreading rapidly around the world.

IT security experts have reported that the virus is currently accounting for around three-quarters of all virus reports, with some estimates suggesting that the infection is present in as many as one in 10 emails.

Zafi-D, which is believed to originate from Hungary, spreads inside bogus Christmas greeting emails. The emails can use a variety of languages including English, French, Spanish and Hungarian.

Embedded inside the email is a lewd animated GIF graphic of two 'smiley' faces, which may fool some users into believing that the attached virus is a joke.

"More than one in 10 emails travelling across the internet at the moment is infected with Zafi-D," warned Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

"Although antivirus protection is available, there must be many home users who have been complacent and are allowing their PCs to belch out more and more infected emails.

"Everyone should consider putting in place automatic antivirus updates, and a policy of blocking dangerous attachments at the email gateway."

Zafi-D attempts to disable antivirus and firewall protection software on infected computers. The worm also tries to open a backdoor on affected PCs, and to download further malicious code from the internet.

"The danger is that infected PCs could come under the control of remote hackers [who] could use the infected PCs to do whatever they want: destroy data, steal information or launch spam campaigns and distributed denial-of-service attacks," said Cluley.

"Computer users who are not properly protected would be completely oblivious to what was happening under their noses."