Miss those carefree days back in the early '80s when you were
playing Super Mario Brothers?
If you do, beware of a new spam campaign that is spreading a
mass-mailing worm. Researchers at security company Sophos reported
that the spammed messages lure users to open an attachment by
promising them it will run one of the classic Super Mario Bros
games.
While opening the attachment does launch a game with the Italian
plumber jumping over obstacles and from platform to platform, but
it also infects the user's machine with the Romario-A worm. The malware, which affects the
Windows platform, sends itself out to e-mail addresses it harvests
from the infected computer and reduces system security, according
to Sophos. The worm also is given a task to run at a specific time
every day.
According to Sophos, the message in the body of the e-mail
generally reads: " Hi There, Do You Like Mario Bross ? Test it, and
you'll like it ;] !"
"Fraudsters are constantly innovating to find new ways of tapping
into users' psyches to tempt them into clicking on infected links
and attachments," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant
at Sophos, in a written statement. "Nintendo's resurgence in the
games market with the Wii console and Mario's global retro appeal
are factors playing directly into the hands of cybercriminals keen
to dupe users. This kind of attack is particularly stealth-like
because nostalgic gamers can actually play the game once they
click, giving them no reason to suspect that something more
sinister is lurking beneath."
The Romario-A doesn't use a new trick, by any means. It's simply
the latest in a series of malware that pretends to be computer
games or to actually run real games, according to Sophos. Other
malware writers have used similar tricks. The W32/Bagle-U worm attempts to start the Microsoft
Hearts game, while the W32/Coconut-A virus urges infected users to throw
coconuts at pictures of a computer security expert and the
Troj/Gonori-A Trojan plays Minesweeper when run.
