PC Users Warned of Iraq War-Insipred Viruses

PC users warned of Iraq war-inspired viruses
Wed Mar 26 2003 00:01:21 ET

Singapore (dpa) - PC users were warned on Wednesday to be careful responding to online polls asking them to vote for or against the U.S.-led war on Iraq that could be a hook to launch a new virus.

``A clever virus-writer may disguise a virus file as an application to vote on the Iraq war, and with all the interest, there is a high chance that people will click on it,'' said Charles Cousins, managing director for Asia of Sophos, an anti-virus vendor.

The Ganda worm will try to entice users to open it by claiming to contain pictures of Iraq taken by U.S. spy satellites, and screensavers mocking U.S. President George Bush, Cousins told the Computer Times.

Wars increase hacking fever, said Allan Bell, Network Associates' marketing director for the Asia-Pacific region.

``Iraq and other less developed countries also have highly skilled programmers capable of creating complex viruses,'' he was quoted as saying.

``Successful models'' like the Yaha, an e-mail virus used by Indian virus-writers to attack Pakistani wabsites, will be copied, Bell predicted.

There have been a lot more politically-motivated viruses and hacking attacks over the last few years, Cousins observed. ``These are likely to continue,'' he said. ``Unfortunately, some of them will be fought using the computers of innocent computer users.''

An ``injustice worm'' on the Israeli-Palestine clashes sends a protest e-mail using the address of infected users to Israeli politicians, the report said.

Two weeks ago an Indian virus-writing group launched a new variant of Yaha that can take control of a computer, using it to send spam to Pakistani websites in the hopes of bringing them down, it added.