Shoutbox

Sober worm delivers Teutonic spam
By Sam Varghese
May 16, 2005

A variant of the mass-mailing Sober worm, which affects systems running the Windows operating system, is responsible for the flood of spam in German over the weekend and today, a senior anti-virus researcher says.

Jakub Kaminski, who works at Computer Associates in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, said the variant had been called Sober-O by CA and Sober-Q by other companies.

"One characteristic of this worm is that it excludes the domains of anti-virus outfits when sending mail, so we do not have samples apart from those which have been sent to us by others," he said.

The mail sent by the worm contains links to news articles on mostly right-wing German sites, with a good number being from the website of the extremist National Democratic Party.

"The worm seems to be up-to-date as far as the news angle goes, as some of the links are to articles about Turkey's bid to become part of the European Union," Kaminski said.

Last week, another variant of the same worm flooded inboxes with bogus emails about tickets to next year's World Cup.
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AP adds: Among the many subjects on the spam emails is one with the German subject line "60 Years of Freedom: Who's Celebrating?" referencing the end of World War II.

Another reads: "Honourable Action". One in English carried the subject: "Dresden Bombing Is To Be Regretted Enormously," referring to the Allied attack on the German city during World War II.

Other messages warned of ethnic Mafia groups and the increase in foreigners attending German schools.