A destructive new mass-mailing Internet worm has been launched into the wild in the form of a Trojan horse targeting the security-conscious.
The worm, which has been named "Yarner" by virus researchers, apparently got its start in a fraudulent e-mail sent sometime Monday to fans of Trojaner-Info.de, a German site specializing in information about malicious code.
The bogus message, written in German, purports to be a newsletter from Trojaner-Info announcing a new release of an actual anti-Trojan program hosted at Trojaner-Info called Yet Another Warner (YAW). The message's subject line is "Trojaner-Info Newsletter."
The booby-trapped yawsetup.exe attached to the bogus e-mail is actually designed to mail copies of itself to addresses in the victim's Microsoft Outlook address book. The worm may also delete all files on the victim's hard disk, according to an analysis by anti-virus companies.
A message at the Trojaner-Info.de site today warned of the Yarner Trojan and said the e-mail used to spread the worm was forged. The site's operators insisted they were not responsible and would never distribute program code by e-mail.
Symantec has assigned Yarner a "moderate" risk-rating. Kaspersky Labs reported that the worm is spreading rapidly in Germany.
News source: NewsBytes
View Virus info: Symantec - w32.yarner.a@mm and Kaspersky Lab VirusList.com - I-Worm.Yarner
The worm, which has been named "Yarner" by virus researchers, apparently got its start in a fraudulent e-mail sent sometime Monday to fans of Trojaner-Info.de, a German site specializing in information about malicious code.
The bogus message, written in German, purports to be a newsletter from Trojaner-Info announcing a new release of an actual anti-Trojan program hosted at Trojaner-Info called Yet Another Warner (YAW). The message's subject line is "Trojaner-Info Newsletter."
The booby-trapped yawsetup.exe attached to the bogus e-mail is actually designed to mail copies of itself to addresses in the victim's Microsoft Outlook address book. The worm may also delete all files on the victim's hard disk, according to an analysis by anti-virus companies.
A message at the Trojaner-Info.de site today warned of the Yarner Trojan and said the e-mail used to spread the worm was forged. The site's operators insisted they were not responsible and would never distribute program code by e-mail.
Symantec has assigned Yarner a "moderate" risk-rating. Kaspersky Labs reported that the worm is spreading rapidly in Germany.
News source: NewsBytes View Virus info: Symantec - w32.yarner.a@mm and Kaspersky Lab VirusList.com - I-Worm.Yarner
After more than two years of bitter legal battles, the labels asked a federal court last month for a monthlong time-out to concentrate on a settlement with the once-controversial start-up. Both sides said at the time they were close to finding common ground.
But that legal "stay" expired Sunday without the two sides reaching agreement. Both sides said Tuesday that the litigation would continue without a renewal of the time-out period.
"Given the current state of settlement negotiations, it didn't make sense for the record companies to agree to Napster's request to keep the litigation on hold," said Recording Industry Association of America General Counsel Cary Sherman.
Napster said it hadn't asked the courts for an extension, but that it did plan to continue settlement talks.
"Napster is continuing our settlement and licensing discussions with the major labels and we remain confident that agreements can be reached in the near term," Napster Chief Executive Konrad Hilbers said in a statement.
A representative of the RIAA, the trade group spearheading the lawsuit on behalf of the music labels, could not immediately be reached.
Napster has been negotiating with each of the Big Five record labels, hoping both for an end to the lawsuit, which closed its original file-swapping service, and for the rights to distribute major-label content through its new subscription service.
That's no small goal, even for companies not facing a lawsuit potentially worth billions of dollars. No other music start-up has been able to win licenses from all five of the major labels. Hilbers has said that he would consider launching without all five, but has said he expects to settle with all of them.
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