Chicago (IL) - A new computer worm which bears the likeness of new American president Barack Obama has reportedly been discovered. It doesn't look to be a serious threat, though, said a distributor of AVG Internet Security Products, but it still shows how vulnerable computers can be.
Walling Data said this Obama Worm, as they're calling it, was first noticed this week on the network of a K-12 school in the President's home state of Illinois. The worm, most likely introduced via the use of a USB flash drive or through email, is said by Walling to be more of a nuisance than a threat to sensitive data as there are changes to EXE/BAT/VBS shell extensions (i.e. breaking EXE files). Plus, it replicates to a large number of folders on the local computer.
On Mondays, the worm depicts Obama's face in the lower right corner of the screen. "We first discovered the worm in the course of some support work we were providing to the school," said Luke Walling, President of Walling Data. "It seems this threat was developed in an off the shelf development environment often used for the production of simple games. The version we have seems to have last been modified in December 2008."
Walling added his firm isolated the components of this worm and have provided samples to security vendors to ensure it is "properly and quickly detected by popular security products." He also said it is likely this is not an isolated incident given how easily computer viruses and worms can be spread.
Walling Data said this Obama Worm, as they're calling it, was first noticed this week on the network of a K-12 school in the President's home state of Illinois. The worm, most likely introduced via the use of a USB flash drive or through email, is said by Walling to be more of a nuisance than a threat to sensitive data as there are changes to EXE/BAT/VBS shell extensions (i.e. breaking EXE files). Plus, it replicates to a large number of folders on the local computer.
On Mondays, the worm depicts Obama's face in the lower right corner of the screen. "We first discovered the worm in the course of some support work we were providing to the school," said Luke Walling, President of Walling Data. "It seems this threat was developed in an off the shelf development environment often used for the production of simple games. The version we have seems to have last been modified in December 2008."
Walling added his firm isolated the components of this worm and have provided samples to security vendors to ensure it is "properly and quickly detected by popular security products." He also said it is likely this is not an isolated incident given how easily computer viruses and worms can be spread.