World Cup Email Contains Virus

By: The Editor

The Sober worm continues to clog up servers and cause problems for users around the globe.

A fake FIFA offer for World Cup tickets distributed by e-mail and containing the Sober worm has propagated to several dozen countries.

The fake message attempts to entice users to launch an attachment to find out more information on obtaining World Cup 2006 tickets. (continued...)

But once a user falls for the trick, the worm gets unleashed.

The soccer-oriented message has primarily appeared in German. Another version of the message in English claims the user has an e-mail problem that only can be addressed by launching the infected attachment.

Sober's primary nuisance effect works similar to past mass-mailing worms, where it tries to send itself to every entry in a user's address book.

Despite the continued disappointment where promises of free stuff turn out to be false, users still seem to think the next offer will be the legitimate one. For system administrators, that outlook leads to a lot of frustration.

As always, users should keep their antivirus software up to date. If you receive an attachment in an e-mail and you aren't expecting one, the safest course of action would be to delete it outright.