Spam Spawns Worms

A new
e-mail computer worm appears to be the work of spammers trying to defeat
anti-spam forces. The W32/Mimail-L worm replicates like other worms,
by e-mailing itself to those in an infected computer’s address
book, but it also sends a second message promising delivery of a CD with
pornographic content. The link to supposedly prevent delivery of the CD
in fact sends an e-mail to one of eight anti-spam organizations.

Steve Linford of the Spamhaus Project said his organization is being flooded
with complaints from computer users who believe Spamhaus is responsible
the CDs. In addition, the worm can turn infected computers into drones
that can be used in denial-of-service attacks against the same eight organizations.

from Wired
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