Spam messages alerting fake virus detected!

Anti-virus firm Symantec Corp on Friday raised the ThreatCon level to a level 2 with level 4 being the highest, after one of the largest spam surges in recent months.

It has identified a new, sophisticated spam attack leveraging on Trojan.Peacomm, or Storm Trojan, which is distributed via a password protected Zip file in the spam messages.

Trojans are malicious programs disguised as legitimate software, often gives someone else the power to take remote control of your computer; may also attack data or systems. Unlike viruses and worms, trojans cannot replicate or propagate themselves and therefore must rely on other methods of distribution.

Trojan.Peacomm targets mostly English speaking countries, affecting both enterprises and consumers. This spam attack is part of the ongoing evolution of Storm Trojan since its original detection in January 2007.

A new twist to this attack is the social engineering tactic the attacker is using to infect people with the Trojan. The subject lines in the spam messages are alerting people of a fake virus detected, such as "Trojan Detected!" or "Virus Activity Detected", to entice people to open the Zip file.

With so many spam mails going around with password protected attachment, it's not hard to see one in your mailbox. A piece of advise. Do not unzip any of those zip files with the password provided in the email unless you are very sure of the sender or the content. Usually i'll advise people to send attachment with Macro in a password protected Zip file & call the recipient with the password. This is much more safer.