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Nude Celebrity E-Mail Infects More Than Curiosity

by Tim Stevens on October 4, 2007 at 11:21 AM

Nude Celebrity E-Mail Infects More Than Curiosity

If you receive an e-mail (even from a friend) with an attachment promising video of starlets like Angelina Jolie or Natalie Portman wearing nothing but their pride, do yourself a favor and don't open it: It's a virus. Amazingly, 80 percent of reported computer infections last month came from this single source. The e-mails contain a message along the lines of, "Shocking video of nude Angelina Jolie," and carry a single attachment named either amazing.zip or shocking.zip. The attachment purports to contain the titillating peep show, but what it actually includes is a piece of malicious software called a rootkit.

A rootkit is basically computer code that installs itself in a protected area on your machine's hard drive. Once there, it's very difficult to detect and remove. Frighteningly, it can do just about anything it wants, including monitoring anything you type on your keyboard, rifling through your files for confidential information, participating in attacks against other computers and, of course, e-mailing itself to all of your contacts.

Sending your friends a virus is no way to win their admiration, but sending them a virus that proves you're the sort of person who would open an attachment like shocking.zip, well, that could do some serious long-term harm to your social status.

If you suspect your computer is infected with a virus, or you'd like to know how to spot the threats currently spreading themselves over the Internet, anti-virus software maker McAffe is a great resource. Granted, this a company trying to sell you a product, but its site offers free information on current viruses and free tools for removing some of the more sinister ones.

From Daily Mail

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Tags: breaking+news, e-mail, top, Virus

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