:rolleyes:
Here’s what the shitbags have come up with this time:
"Vote Virus wreaks tech havoc
By PATRICK BRETHOUR
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail
The Vote Virus — billed as the most destructive e-mail bug yet — is eating into computers around North America, exploiting war worries and public concern over the terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Vote Virus began spreading early Monday and has affected at least 50 large corporate computer networks in North America.
The computer contagion — which masquerades as an anti-war petition asking respondents to “vote to live in peace” — is not believed to be the work of the terrorist groups that attacked New York’s World Trade Center and Washington last week, even though the file that launches the virus is titled “WTC.exe.”
Rather, Internet security experts said, the Vote Virus is a cruel hoax by someone seeking to take advantage of the intense emotions generated by the murderous attacks.
“I think they’re playing on people’s interest, fears and depression about the World Trade Center disaster,” said Barry Keyes, vice-president of e-trust security solutions at Computer Associates International Inc.
The Vote Virus, technically deemed to be a “worm,” attacks and destroys all information on an infected personal computer, including its operating system and stored data. “Your system will be toast,” said Gus Malezis, general manager of the Canadian arm of security software firm Network Associates Inc.
Mr. Malezis and other security experts said the Vote Virus is not proliferating as rapidly as more benign infections, such as the Nimda virus whose explosive spread last week ate up as much as 10 per cent of the Internet’s capacity.
Computer Associates said the Vote Virus is ranked as a “medium risk,” reflecting its “destructive payload” but comparatively constrained ability to spread. Network Associates ranks it as a “low risk.” Mr. Keyes said his firm and others are picking apart the virus for clues to the identity of its creator.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation had no comment, and the Web site of the National Infrastructure Protection Center did not have an advisory on the virus.
The Vote Virus, written in stilted English and seemingly randomly capitalized letters, exploits vulnerabilities in Microsoft Outlook, the e-mail program from Microsoft Corp.
The subject line of the e-mail reads: “Fwd: Peace BeTweeN AmeriCa And IsLaM!” Users are then asked to “vote to live in peace” by clicking on the WTC.exe file.
But doing so launches the virus, which e-mails copies of itself to all addresses in the Outlook address book and overwrites the message “AmeRiCa . . . Few Days Will Show You What We Can Do!!! It’s Our Turn” on any Web page or e-mail that looks like a Web page.
When a computer is restarted, the virus then wipes out the Windows operating system and all data on the machine’s hard drive. It then displays the message: “I promiss We WiLL Rule The World Again … By The Way.”