E-mail 'worm' spreads holiday jeers
Grinch-like virus writers are spreading their version of holiday cheer by embedding a variant of the so-called "Zafi" e-mail worm inside electronic greetings.
E-mails with the misspelled attachment "Happy Hollydays" arrived in inboxes Tuesday, with the subject line "Merry Christmas." A worm is hiding inside the attachment.
It propagates itself via e-mail contact lists when the attached file is opened and could render infected computers more vulnerable to spammers or hackers.
The worm spread overnight across 18 European countries, including Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, but was not expected to make waves in the United States. The Europe-U.S. time difference gave antivirus companies stateside some breathing room.
"Zafi hit the European countries hard and fast this morning at 4 a.m. their time," said Patrick Hinojosa, CTO of the security software company Panda Software, "People open e-mail mainly at work though, so companies here in the U.S. would have already updated their virus protection by the time Americans were waking up."
