SAN FRANCISCO — The Santa Claus worm doesn’t care whether you’ve been naughty or nice, but it’s making a list of PCs to infect this holiday season, according to a threat alert released by security firm IMlogic today.<\/P><\/p>\n
A new instant-messaging worm called IM.GiftCom.All is making the rounds this holiday season. Rated as a “medium” threat by IMlogic, the worm attempts to get users of the instant-messaging networks run by America Online, Yahoo, and Microsoft to visit a seemingly festive Web site featuring Santa Claus.<\/P><\/p>\n
The message comes from someone already present on a user’s “buddy list,” said Art Gilliland, vice president of products for IMlogic. It contains a supposed link to a URL (uniform resource locator) starting with “santaclause.aol.com\/a?|”<\/P><\/p>\n
However, clicking on that link takes users to a different Web site and triggers the download of a malicious file to a user’s PC, Gilliland said. That file is created using rootkit techniques, making it extremely difficult to detect with conventional antivirus or operating system tools, he said. Once resident on a system, the file tries to shut down antivirus software and collects personal information that can be redistributed over the Internet.<\/P><\/p>\n
IMlogic has not recorded an instance where that personal information was actually sent out to the Internet, but the program does log information, Gilliland said.<\/P><\/p>\n
Don’t Click!<\/B>
\nUsers are advised to avoid clicking on anything sent through an instant-messaging system unless they have verified that the file or picture is legitimate and the sender intended to pass it along, Gilliland said. IMlogic recently identified an instant-messaging bot that produces canned assurances that a file is legitimate when the recipient replies to check its authenticity, so it’s important to take extra care to verify the sender’s intentions, he said.<\/P><\/p>\n
Tom Krazit, IDG News Service<\/SMALL><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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