Tech Shout!

The next time you receive an email with the message ‘screen saver’ in the subject line, and it carries an attachment, beware.

According to security experts at Mumbai-based MicroWorld Technologies, an email worm named ‘Conycspa.p’ is doing the rounds on the Internet. ‘Conycspa.p’ uses spammed mails that promise users a screen saver to users as a medium to infect PCs.

Once a victim of this malware campaign downloads the attachment named ‘web.exe’ and tries to run it as well, the worm ‘Conycspa.p’ gets activated automatically. This worm comes with downloader Trojan capabilities as it tries to log on to many Web sites and bring in several Trojans, Adwares and Porn Dialers.

According to Govind Rammurthy, CEP of MicroWorld Technologies, “At a time when malware writers are piggybacking on vulnerability exploits to sneak into computers and do all harm, the author of this worm comes from a rather old school of thought. He relies on exploiting the human vulnerability of impulsive curiosity. And the fact these kinds of worms are still managing to get some victims stresses on the need for better user education in email handling.”

Yet another important aspect of many present day malware is to work in a two-tiered manner, just like in the ‘Conycspa.p’ case.

Software such as AntiSpam and Content Security software like ‘eScan’ is able to provide proactive protection to users from the ‘Conycspa.p’ worm as well as other kinds of malware.

eScan, which is powered by MWL technology, performs Virus scanning at the Winsock layer. Thus, there is absolutely no need to taking the object to the application level for checking its contents.