World Cup soccer fans should be aware of a new worm being circulated by e-mail with the German-language message "WM-Tickets" or "Weltmeisterschaft," security vendor Sophos warned Wednesday.
The e-mail contains an attachment, which, when opened, activates the W32/Zasran-A worm. The worm is programmed to send itself to addresses stored in Microsoft Outlook address books and manipulate security settings to give hackers access to other personal information stored in users' PCs.
The Zasran-A worm is the second World Cup-related virus detected in May, with the games scheduled to kick off June 9.
On May 4, the Baden-Württemberg State Bureau of Criminal Investigation (LKA) warned of an e-mail with a link to a self-extracting Excel file that claims to contain the game plan for the soccer tournament. The German-language e-mail contains the message "Fussball Weltmeisterschaft 2006 in Deutschland" (2006 World Cup Soccer Tournament in Germany) and the link "googlebook.exe."
When clicked, the link installs a Trojan horse on users' PCs. The program appears to have originated from a server in the U.S., according to LKA officials.
