Storm virus gathers pace

The virus Trojan.Peacomm, first spotted last Wednesday, has been raised to a category three threat by vendor Symantec due to the speed at which it is spreading across the web.

The trojan, has been raised to a higher category following a sustained increase in theseen a number of samples which appeared over the weekend.

It is using traditional social engineering techniques to encourage recipients to open the email and click on the attachments.

'It is a long time since we have seen a trojan spread with such pace, and demonstrates that despite the many new techniques being adopted by virus writers and hackers, the old and simpler technique of relying on end-user weakness still allow threats to propagate at great speed,' said Kevin Hogan, senior security researcher at Symantec Response.

The Trojan has been arriving in emails claiming to contain a video clip with a variety of subjects including ‘230 dead as storm batters Europe’ and ‘British Muslims Genocide’. Once the users clicks on the attachment the computer will become infected with the Trojan which will attempt to connect to a remote address.

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Further Reading:

Virus writers take advantage of last week's storms

Symantec profits take a dive

First worm of New Year strikes