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London/ Cupertino (pte015/20.03.2003/11:05) - Computer hackers are taking advantage of the conflict in Iraq to spread their worms and viruses. Security firms Symantec http://www.symantec.com and Sophos http://www.sophos.com say the new Ganda.A worm is luring e-mail recipients with supposed espionage pictures from Iraq and anti-Bush screensavers.
"The author of this virus is intentionally taking advantage of public interest in the current crisis to spread his virus," said Gernot Hacker, senior technical consultant at Sophos. In addition to claimed spy images, the infected e-mails promise users a special George Bush screensaver, hoping to attract critics of the US president http://www.sophos.de/virusinfo/analyses/w32gandaa.html
Ganda.A sends itself to all contacts in the Outlook address book and uses its own SMTP server to spread itself when the user's server is not available. The subject line of the e-mail is in English or Swedish, depending on the recipient system's language settings. Once the user's PC has been infected, the virus attempts to deactivate security features such as filters or firewalls.
The bug is designed to attack Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP and Me systems. Linux, Mac or Unix systems are immune. According to Sophos and Symantec, the virus has not yet spread very far. (newsfox-special Iraq)
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