New Worm pretends to be CNN News Source

A smart new worm is roaming around on the web already full of similar sort of troublesome Trojans. It comes pretending to be news headline syndicate from one of the most popular news sources around – CNN. The worm is smart enough to keep updating the news from the original website and also picks up the actual news content so as to fool people into believing that it is from CNN itself.

The worm installs a Trojan on the infected computer, which tries to act as a keylogger and sends this information to unknown sources. This information can further be used to gain passwords and other sensitive information like credit card numbers and the likes. Anti-virus form Sophos has notified that the worm picks the subject lines, message content and attachment names from the CNN news story headlines in real-time. It then transmits to email addresses found in address books of infected computers pretending to be a newsletter from CNN containing the latest news.

They have labeled this worm Crowt-A and this just might start a new trend which has in the past hit users with identities resembling Banking and Credit companies like PayPal and Citibank. A Sophos representative had this to say about the new worm: “This latest ploy feeds on people’s desire for the latest news. Many people subscribe to legitimate email news updates, but the message is simple – businesses need to make sure their anti-virus detection is constantly updated and users need to be suspicious of all unsolicited email whether it’s promising celebrity pictures or news updates.”