Skype Warns Users about Circulating Worm
Skype Ltd. warned its users Monday that a worm targeting Windows PCs is spreading through the service's instant messenger, making the Voice over IP (VOIP)'s chat software the latest to come under the hacker gun.
Dubbed Ramex.a by Skype spokesman Villu Arak -- but pegged Pykspa.d by Symantec Corp. -- the worm takes a typical instant messenger (IM) line of attack: After hijacking contacts from an infected machine's Skype software, it sends messages to those people that include a live link. Recipients who blithely click on the URL -- which poses as a JPG image but is actually a download to a file with the .scr extension -- wind up infected.
"The chat message, of which there are several versions, is cleverly written and may appear to be a legitimate chat message, which may fool some users into clicking on the link," said Arak in an alert on the Skype site.
