WORM_SOBER.S

Taken From:

Malware type: Worm
Aliases: W32.Sober.O@mm W32/Sober.p@MM W32/Sober-N Sober.P Email-Worm.Win32.Sober.p
In the wild: Yes
Destructive: No
Language: English
Platform: Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP
Encrypted: No
Characteristics: Propagates via email

Description:

This worm spreads by mass-mailing copies of itself using its own SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) engine. It gathers its target recipients from files with certain extensions names. Notably, it avoids sending messages to addresses that contain specific strings.

Using social engineering techniques, it sends out an email supposedly sent by the soccer organization FIFA, informing recipients that they won tickets for the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. It also sends email messages in English or in German, depending on the country-level domains of the gathered addresses.

Social engineering, a propagation technique that is widely utilized by most worm programs, invests largely on computer users' instinctive tendency to open email messages, execute attachments that are enticing and apparently harmless, and download and unknowingly open attractively named files.

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