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Privacy threatening worm on the loose

Sircam virus is far from chivalrous

A worm which appends a random document from a victim's hard drive to its body when it spreads has appeared on the Internet.

The Sircam worm, which spreads as an attachment to email messages, may in certain cases delete files from a victim's hard disk. A number of incidents of the virus have been reported but its outbreak is believed to have been contained.

Sircam is similar to the Magistr virus in its ability to arrive in an email with a random subject, body text and attachment name. However infected attachments contain a double extension, which gives users a clue that an email might contain a virus.

The worm contains its own SMTP routine which is used to send email messages to email addresses found in the Windows address book and the temporary internet folder, where cached internet files are kept.

Antivirus vendors are in the process of updating their software to deal with the virus and, in most cases, the necessary protection is already in place. Users are also advised to delete any suspicious emails without opening them. ®

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Write up on Sircam by Symantec

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