IM Worm Near-Instantly Gone
A short lived worm on AIM contained after a few hours on the loose
Thursday, June 16, 2005
BY : Brian Ashe
What appeared to be a variant of the Opanki worm spread viciously through AOL's Instant Messanger Service on Wednesday. It first popped up around 4 PM EDT. However it seemed that AOL had been able to put a filter in place within a couple of hours to curtail the spread of this little pest any further. It also appears that the site where the file was hosted was promptly shut down as well.
The message that arrived in the IM client with a message of "LOL LOOK AT HIM" and included a link to a file called "picture.pif" hosted on the Web. Should the user click on that link it would unleash the virus which would then start spreading itself to all of the people on the user's AIM Buddy List.
The exact level of malice of this particular worm is not fully known yet. However, most similar worms have installed backdoors or Trojans to allow remote control of the victims computer.
As always, keep your anti-virus up to date and, just as with e-mails, caution should be taken with links in any instant message even from those people you know.
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