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NEW SOBER VIRUS VARIANT
New Sober virus says you got mail from FBI!
Purported mail from FBI or CIA is the 25th version of Sober virus.
WASHINGTON: An e-mail from the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency is not something mail users would dare to ignore.
But beware, the only thing you could do wrong with it would be to open it. It is the latest in the series of viruses that have wreaked havoc in PCs.
The “FBI Windows" virus which is spreading comes in a mail supposedly from either the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or German police agency BKA.
It cons the users telling them that they have been detected visiting web sites which are considered illegal with a subject line that says either "You visit illegal websites" or "Your IP was logged".
And if the user opens the attachment file, the virus gets activated and infects the computer.
The mail has created so much confusion that the FBI has come on record saying that the agency does not engage in the “practice of sending unsolicited e-mails to the public”.
Anti-virus firms said they have stumbled upon millions of copies of the malicious programme, which means that a lot of people have fallen prey to the virus and their PCs infected.
Reports said this is the 25th version of the Sober virus first detected in October, 2005.
The FBI variant also reportedly checks if the PC has been infected by earlier variants and shuts them to do its own sort of damage.
The FBI virus reportedly started its ‘operations’ on November 22.
Mail filtering firm MessageLabs nabbed three million copies of the Sober variant in the first 24 hours of the FBI virus outbreak.
The virus, which also appears as purported video of Paris Hilton, fake password change notices and e-mail error messages, can only infect Windows PCs.
Reports said it was considered the biggest virus outbreak of 2005. Most of the victims of the FBI virus attacks have been in North America, reports said.
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