This article is more than 1 year old

Acrobat virus delivers Bum's Rush

Peachy Keen

Virus writers have turned their sights on Adobe Acrobat: the result is a Peachy, a worm that infects PDF files.

Peachy is a Visual Basic Script (VBS) worm which virus writers have embedded in a document that challenges user to "find the peach" among a series of pictures of naked female buttocks.

Gullible users double-click on an icon which promises a solution to the puzzle. This triggers a VBS script, their machines becomes infected and copies of the virus will be emailed to people in a user's Outlook address book.

The virus is low-risk because it relies on the installation of a full version of Adobe Acrobat to spread. according to Jack Clark, European product manager of the McAfee antivirus division of Network Associates.

Users who only have an Acrobat reader are not affected because the reader does not support the code that recognises attachments in Adobe Acrobat (which is used to create PDF files).

Clark said the virus shows that PDF files should be scanned for viruses - adding that antiviral products from McAfee were one of few to do this. ®

External links:
Write up on the virus by McAfee

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