by Bob Francis

The Paris Hilton Academy of Computer Security

news
Feb 23, 20052 mins

It’s no simple life for Paris Hilton. Just a day after her Sidekick address book hack was made public, the hotel heiress is now being used as bait for two different e-mail worms.

According to experts at SophosLabs, Sophos’ global network of virus and spam analysis centers, have warned users to be wary of e-mails containing references to Paris Hilton after two different worms were discovered claiming to contain hardcore footage of the privacy-challenged blonde heiress.

The W32/Sober-K worm, which is spreading in the wild, bulk mails itself using a variety of different subject lines including “Paris Hilton, pure!” and “Paris Hilton SexVideos”. It can send itself in either German or English language, depending on whether it believes the recipient’s email address to be owned by a German or English speaker.

The W32/Ahker-C worm sends itself using the subject line “Paris Hilton…download it!” with an attached file called “ParisXXX.zip”. The worm attempts to disable anti-virus and firewall software running on the computer, and blocks access to a number of websites, potentially opening up the PC to further attack by hackers and malware.

It is no simple life for Paris and not for any user victimized by e-mail viruses either.