Beware the Skype stiletto worm
A new Skype worm that displays an image of a scantily clad woman wearing stilettos (shown left) has been identified by security companies F-Secure and Sophos.
The worm has been named “IM-Worm:W32/Pykse.A” by F-Secure and Mal/Pykse-A by Sophos.
When the worm infects a computer, it sets the Skype user’s status to DND (do not disturb) before sending a message with a malware link to all online friends in the Skype contact list.
Clicking on the link displays an image of a scantily clad model wearing stiletto heeled shoes, but only after infecting the PC with a downloader Trojan which then installs the worm. The image of the woman is displayed in a bid by the malware creator to cover up the true purpose of the download.
“Once it’s up and running, the Pykse worm attempts to connect to a number of remote websites, presumably in an attempt to generate advertising revenue for them by increasing their number of ‘hits’,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.
“It’s another example of the methods that malware authors can use to make money. With an ever increasing wave of malicious attacks, companies to need to ensure that not only do they have secure defenses in place, but also that they are enforcing policies about what programs their users can run and which websites their PCs can visit.”
Web sites connected to by the worm currently contain ”The Living Africa” content , which has been ripped from a legitimate site: library.thinkquest.org.
Some of the sites include an invisible iframe, which sucks in content from online advertising companies. Others don’t contain advertising content, and seem to contain just mirror of the legitimate page. However, Sophos warns that they could be updated by hackers in the future to contain malicious content.
It appears that Sophos doesn’t believe that this worm is likely to cause too many problems, noting that none of the previous Skype worms “have been particularly widespread compared to other major outbreaks of malware”.
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April 17th, 2007
I’d share my ‘contact info’ with her.