BostonHerald.com - Business Today: Worm uses FBI calling card to infect computers

BostonHerald.com - Business Today: Worm uses FBI calling card to infect computers: "Worm uses FBI calling card to infect computers
By Jesse Noyes
Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - Updated: 07:36 AM EST

An e-mail scam is using the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a front to scare recipients into downloading a worm circulating the Internet and infecting computers worldwide.
The FBI issued alerts Monday and yesterday warning computer users about the scam, which is sent under official-looking e-mail addresses such as mail@fbi.gov, post@fbi.gov and admin@fbi.gov. The text of the e-mail tells users they are under surveillance for visiting illegal Web sites and instructs them to open an attachment.
?People think this could possibly be important,? said Gail Marcinkiewicz, spokeswoman at the FBI?s Boston office.
The FBI, which is investigating the mass e-mail virus, never sends out unsolicited e-mail to the public, Marcinkiewicz said. The scam isn?t the result of a hacker cracking into the FBI?s e-mail system. It only mimics the agency?s moniker, she added.
Several million e-mails were sent out just yesterday, most of which have been picked up in the United States and Germany, said Partick Hinojosa, chief technology officer at Panda Software US ? a Glendale, Calif., online security firm monitoring the virus.
The e-mail carries a Sober.AH worm, which doesn?t appear to damage infected computers but instead finds other addresses stored in the computer, Hinojosa said. Still, if they?ve fallen victim to the scam, users should have their computers checked, he added.
The virus was likely sent as spam hitting thousands of e-mail addresses at one time. That makes finding the source of the scam difficult, even for the FBI, Hinojosa said.
?If I was in Vegas and I had to put some money on this, I wouldn?t put it on law enforcement,? he said.
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