Tech Shout!

With the spurt of special Valentine’s Day offers and new launches of phones, laptops, and many more devices, here comes yet another V-Day surprise. But this one is of a different kind. Security experts are now warning PC users to be on guard against viruses that are masquerading as Valentine’s Day messages. This Valentine’s Day virus could damage computers.

PandaLabs, a U.S. security firm had first detected an increase in a worm that the company dubbed “Nurech.A’. The worm apparently hides in e-mails which have subjects such as “Together You and I” and “Til the End of Time Heart of Mine.”

Basically, only those people who open an attached file such as postcard.exe, can end up getting their computers infected badly with the Valentine’s Day virus. In fact, security firm, Symantec said that it had detected “large scale spamming” of e-mails that include a Trojan horse. A Trojan horse is a program that contains or installs a malicious program.

Symatec also added that the malware was a newer version of Trojan.Peacomm or the malware which is also known as the “Storm Trojan.”

According to Orla Cox, Symantec,”With Valentine’s Day approaching, this time around the authors are attempting to tug on the heartstrings of unsuspecting users with romantic subject lines such as ‘My Heart belongs to you.”

Here is what Luis Corrons, technical director, PandaLabs had to advise on the new Valentine’s day virus, “As a general rule, don’t open any suspicious e-mail, regardless of what it says it contains. Instead of going on instincts, let a security solution decide whether it’s safe to open it or not.”

Carrons also said that events like Valentine’s Day and Christmas are often exploited by cyber-criminals to try and spread their ‘creations’ by disguising infected e-mails as e-greeting cards.