Dangerous New Worm Spreading On The Internet

Mike Headrick
Reporting
(KUTV) SALT LAKE CITY The next time you go to your inbox look before you open your new messages. A new form of the “Storm Worm” is slamming into e-mail inboxes worldwide.

“Hundreds injured and dozens killed”…it wasn’t too long ago that that powerful storm ripped through parts of Europe.

And now that single news event has served as a Trojan horse housing a worm, sent to your email with a subject line: “239 Dead As Storm Batters Europe.”

“So people will click on it and they’ve been infected,” says Dan Young, CEO of PC Laptops.

The “Storm Worm”, as it’s called. It’s one of the larger worms to attack personal computers around the world.

It destroys data, erases information and its primary goal is to steal your personal identity.

Chances are you won’t know it until it’s too late.

“What this is primarily doing is infecting itself onto the computer to send in a tracking cookie, a hijacker to collect and send personal information out,” says Young.

Experts say, like most worms or viruses there are a lot of variances. Especially in the way you get infected.

In fact, sometimes all it takes is clicking a random icon on an unfamiliar web site. Even so, web sites aren’t the primary route of a worm or virus.

Young says, “The biggest way people get viruses is by opening email from people they don’t know. Strange offers and clicking to open those things, that’s humungous.”

Bottom line: if you don’t know where the email is coming from, don’t open it.

If you do your computer probably won’t be the only sick about it.
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