Storm Worm Brought Back to Life in Form of Dancing Skeleton

A cybercriminal gang is attempting to hijack Halloween festivities to infect the PCs of innocent computer users. Malicious spam e-mails sent across the Internet direct users to a Halloween-themed Web site offering a download of a dancing skeleton game, but really designed to install a Trojan horse that gives hackers remote access to the PC. E-mails containing the malicious links have a variety of subject lines including:

• Happy Halloween
• Dancing Bones
• The most amazing dancing skeleton
• Show this to the kids
• Send this to your friends
• Man this rocks

"This is just the latest incarnation of the poisoned e-card attack (also known as Storm) which has dominated the malware scene for months. The gang responsible are experts at choosing topical disguises or crafting alluring e-mails that the unwary may find difficult to resist," said Graham Cluley, senior technology of consultant. "What's even more frightening is that when innocent users click to see the skeleton dance, the site also plays The Vengaboys song 'Boom boom boom boom'. The good news is that advanced IT security defenses are able to stop an attack like this dead in its tracks."