BIOS: Technology Means Business

Panda Software has detected the presence of emails containing Nuwar.B, a new variant of the Nuwar family of worms.

This malicious code uses the New Year as a ruse to infect computers. This is not a malicious code designed to cause an epidemic or damage computers but to artificially drive up certain prices on the stock market.

"This is just another turn of the screw in the field of cyber-crime. In this case we see how an e-mail worm is being used to make money," said Mikel Perez, Director of the Malware Detection Department. "Most likely this is a criminal that has bought stocks at a low price, and has endeavoured to increase their price and obtain large benefits by spreading Nuwar.B," he added.

Nuwar.B reaches computers in a message with the subject "Happy New Year!" The message text is blank, and includes a file with the name postcard.exe, which contains the worm. Also, to gain credibility, it spoofs the sender's address, pretending to come from various users.

If the target user runs the attached file, Nuwar.B copies itself to the system and downloads a copy of the Spammer.EN Trojan to the computer. The Trojan then connects to certain e-mail servers to send out spam to the addresses it finds on the affected system. This particular spam contains information to convince users to buy certain stocks to increase their price rapidly.

It appears that the creator(s) of Nuwar.B have sent out the worm as spam, manipulating certain e-mail servers in an attempt to distribute it as quickly as possible. The proactive TruPrevent Technologies have detected Nuwar.B without prior identification, so computers that have them installed have been protected from the outset.

Panda Software clients that don't yet have TruPrevent Technologies have the updates available to install them along with their antivirus and ensure they have prevented protection against unknown viruses and intruders. More information about TruPrevent Technologies at www.pandasoftware.com/truprevent.

To help as many users as possible scan and disinfect their systems, Panda Software offers free, online anti-malware solution, Panda ActiveScan, which now also detects spyware, at http://www.activescan.com.

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