Valentine’s Day eCards – Will You Be A Victim?

This post was written by admin on January 29, 2009
Posted Under: Exploits, PC Security, Valentine's Day

Prepare for a new breed of viruses as Valentine's Day approaches, will you become a victim of the Valentine's Day Massacre?

Security experts are warning that a new spam campaign has been created by the creators of the Storm virus which wreaked havoc last year.

The spam emails will come in the form of ecards yet again, the favorite method is to include a link for users to click which will redirect them to a site with a dozen red hearts.

Users are then prompted to click any one of the hearts which will then install the bot trojan 'Waledec'.
Malicious Icons
Waledec is also known under the following aliases:
Trojan.Spambot.4202 - Dr Web
Trojan.Waledac.B - BitDefender
Trojan:Win32/Waledac.A - Microsoft
W32.Waledac - SymantecW32/IRCbot-ZG - Sophos
Win32/Waledac.D - Eset Nod32

The email subject lines are expected to be quite short such as 'In your arms', 'With all my love', 'Me and you' and other similar subject lines.

PC's were hijacked in 2007 and 2008 by the Storm botnet as users clicked on the embedded links in Valentine ecards to find out who their mysterious admirer was.

The 'Waledec' malware first infected users PC's shortly before Christmas using fake ecard greetings and surfaced again prior to Barack Obama taking office with spam emails containing 'Breaking news about Barack Obama'.

These are seen as 'dummy runs' to see whether users would follow the embedded links, which of course many did and these computers were added to the creators collection.

It is currently believed that only a small number of computers are infected, around 10,000 but it would appear that at present the botnet creators are building a new bot network and once completed, the signal will be sent to infected machines to search for email addresses and then spam other users.

Current research shows that the spam emails are being sent at a rate of 4,000 - 5,000 per hour and this is expected to increase as Valentine's Day approaches.

What can you do to protect yourself?

Do NOT click on any embedded links in emails, especially ecards and if you do get redirected do NOT click on any further links or images.

Also ensure that your antivirus and antimalware programs are updated and all system patches are installed.

Suggested removal for those who are infected is to download and run:
Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

32bit users Download Microsoft MSRT here
64bit users Download Microsoft MSRT here

Also scan online for free with BitDefender