e-Cards, Memberships and More SPAM!

In January of this year, I blogged about A New Storm Brewing, subsequently following up with other iterations as the year has progressed. Lately, this e-mail is doing more than brewing up a storm. As reported by ComputerWorld,

"Storm, the Trojan horse that collects PCs into hacker-controlled botnets, roared back into life last month in several waves, security researchers said Monday, and has blown by 2005's Sober to become the most prolific e-mail-borne malware ever.

"This is the biggest since Sober in mid-to-late 2005," said Sam Masiello, director of threat research at MX Logic Inc., referring to a long-lasting worm whose variants struck repeatedly in the second half of 2005, often in extremely high numbers. In November 2006, for instance, e-mail filtering companies reported malware-laden e-mail counts spiking 1,500% in a week, and said they were intercepting four times the usual number of infected messages."

There are more varieties now and changing quickly. Some are still the e-cards from family, friends, etc. Others provide links to the membership account reportedly just signed up for. Some have an IP Address to click on, others show an HTML link. The important thing to remember is

DO NOT CLICK THE LINK!!!

One consolidated source of information on the Storm (Nuwar/Zhelatin) worm/trojan) is Microsoft MVP Harry Waldron. He has been providing detailed information on the developments.

Recent References:

• Oh boy, more Nuwar tricks!
• ‘Fun World’? Not Really
• ‘Fun World’? Not Really–Part 2
• Zhelatin/Storm changes yet again
• Zhelatin gang changing tactics

Remember - "A day without laughter is a day wasted."
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart...