Is It Stormy Where You Are?

Keep your eyes open people. Make sure your anti-virus software is up to date, and never, NEVER, open email attachments without scanning them first.

Like a summer cyclone gathering force, the Storm e-mail worm is casting an expanding shadow on the Internet.

Storm first spread to e-mail in-boxes in Europe and the USA in January - enticing recipients to click on a link for a fake news story about a deadly storm or other dramatic event. Clicking on the link turned the PC over to Storm’s controller.

As security companies began blocking such e-mail, Storm instead started sending out links to tainted e-cards purportedly from family or friends.

“It’s the perfect example of the cat-and-mouse game where the author modifies the threat to stay ahead,” says Ben Greenbaum, senior research at anti-virus supplier Symantec. (SYMC)

At the Black Hat security conference here, Atlanta-based security firm SecureWorks said Thursday that it has blocked 20 million copies of Storm from hitting e-mail in-boxes at its 1,800 clients since June.

[Source: USAToday via Yahoo! News]