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back to article Swine flu malware poses as pig plague update

Wrongdoers have created a new strain of swine flu-themed malware. A Trojan, containing backdoor and keylogger functionality, poses as a Word document from the US Centre of Disease Control giving information about the disease. The infectious file - Novel H1N1 Flu Situation Update.exe - appears with an icon that makes it look …

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  1. Rod MacLean

    So let's get this straight

    A real-life "snoutbreak" prompts infection on computers?

    lol

    It's not even as if the file extension is .doc.exe

    It's just .exe

    People stupid enough to open it deserve to get their machines infected!

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  2. Sooty

    does anyone know

    if windows 7 defaults to showing file extensions, i can't remember, but it's about due time for this silly security hole to be plugged.

    Exploits like this really shouldn't catch anybody out anymore, especially with all the warnings that you get trying to run downloaded executable code these days.

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  3. Jamie 19
    Linux

    Always the same thing

    If you are honestly stupid enough to thing that the US CDC actually will send you an email with an attachment, then I also have an email from Mr. Bill Gates promising 10,000 USD if you install the attached application for testing purposes.

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  4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    News InterNetional with AI Co-Operation

    "Using events in the news to spice up malware threats has been the stock in trade of VXers for years"

    And inventing news events to spice up government and media activity has been the stock in trade of markets for donkeys.

    However, there are new tales to tell and new stock in trades to sell, with some able to foretell, by virtue of their deep packet inspection/analysis of invented news events.

    But y'all surely knew that already.:-)

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  5. Jimbob 3
    Go

    Don't just open anything...

    Just don't open attachments that you weren't expecting. File type of 'Application' would also give the game away. As would it being called a .doc.exe (ohh DOS days!).

    I wish I knew an easy way of educating non-techs about this threat.

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  6. Maty
    FAIL

    Surely ...

    If you were using a proper word processor - e.g. Write from Open Office - when you opened the file you would just see some garbled source code?

    What kind of idiots would create a word processor that runs executables, let alone executables that have kernel access?

    Oh yes ....

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  7. KarlTh

    @Maty

    Word does not run executables. If you double-click the attachment *from the email*, then you will run the executable rather than open it. The malware fakes the document opening. Lots of people open attachments by double-clicking them straight from the attachments window. Nothing to do with retarded WP software.

    Obviously if the attachment is saved and an attempt is made to open it in a WP program, it will either fail to find it altogether (because it doesn't have a document file extension), or fail to open it because the file format isn't recognised by the WP.

    So the answer to your question is "nobody, no, not even Microsoft".

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