New Sober worm expected to hit Jan. 5
A new "Sober" worm is set to hit in January in an attack tied to the founding of the Nazi party that could slow the Internet with tens of millions of politically-motivated spam e-mails, security experts said Wednesday.
The impending outbreak is the latest variant of a worm that that last hit the Internet on Nov. 22 and marked the most prolific computer virus of its kind this year, according to VeriSign Inc.'s security unit iDefense.
The company said the worm is scheduled to hit on January 5, a date it said marked the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party. A worm is a type of computer virus that spreads by sending copies of itself over a network, such as the Internet. Most viruses these days are worms, since almost all computers are linked by networks now.
"The attack could have a significant detrimental effect on Internet traffic, as e-mail servers are flooded with politically motivated spam e-mails from potentially tens of millions of e-mail addresses," iDefense said.
