News
Goner Mass-Mailing Worm Makes the Rounds
- By Scott Bekker
- December 04, 2001
A new mass-mailing worm made the rounds on Tuesday, flooding corporate e-mail inboxes with messages marked with the subject line "Hi" and carrying a screen-saver attachment.
According to Symantec Security Response, the worm, called "Goner" or W32.Goner.A@mm, is a Visual Basic script with a screen-saver attachment.
When recipients click on the screen-saver attachment, they see an error message designed to fool them into thinking the attachment may have been legitimate. Behind the scenes, the worm is mailing itself to the user's Outlook Address Book, attempting to delete anti-virus processes and inserting a Registry key.
Goner can also spread its infection via the ICQ and IRC networks, Symantec said.
The attachment title is goner.scr. The body of the e-mail, with typos included, reads: "How are you ? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you. I am in a harry, I promise you will love it!"
Symantec rated the worm's severity as a 3 on a scale of 5.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.