A worm which poses as a virus clean up utility has appeared.

Fortunately All3gro is neither spreading rapidly nor doing much harm but it is a sign that virus writers are coming up with fresh social engineering techniques through which they hope to snare the unwary. Perhaps the technique was thought up because of the recent hype about the Code Red worm and the continuing spread of the SirCam virus.

All3gro come in the form of an email with a subject line "New antivirus tool" and attached file "Antivirus.exe", which contains the worm. If you're daft enough to open the attachment you get infected, providing of course you've got a Windows machine. Mac and Linux users can sleep easy: they're immune from infection.

As well as emailing copies of itself to other people, depending on the day of the week the worm takes some antivirus like actions, such as cleaning up the Sircam worm or deleting the Pretty Park virus.

Unfortunately it doesn't delete itself from a user's system... ®

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Write up of All3gro by Central Command

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