Sober.Q worm floods the internet

Posted on Monday, May 16 2005 @ 20:09 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

The internet is currently flooded by English and German hate messages generated by the Sober.Q worm. Security firms say the worm is sending massive amounts of spam as they have measured hundreds of thousands of e-mail generated by Sober.Q in its first 24 hours.

The new Sober.Q worm does not spread itself, it only sends right-wing political propaganda. The cause of the problem is actually Sober.P which suddenly stopped spreading on Tuesday. Anti-virus experts discovered a few lines of code in the Sober.P worm which allowed it to connect to websites to download new code.

This allowed the worm to download the new code and upgrade to Sober.Q which sends out huge loads of spam to harvested e-mail addresses. Today I have received a few hundreds of e-mails generated by Sober.Q, most of them were in German and they linked to genuine sites.

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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