Fear the Spam Storm, Not the Trojan

It must have been a slow news weekend. A number of news sources have been eagerly warning folks about the Trojan storm heading their way. It originated at F-Secure.com when they, like many of us, noticed a large number of spam E-mails which contained a worm/Trojan they call “small.DAM”.

They even posted a Storm-Worm video on You-Tube showing the storm as it was discovered around the world.

The Trojan arrives has an attachment to an Email which has any number of subject lines containing a tantalizing news headline like "Russian missile shot down Chinese satellite", “Sadam Hussein alive!” or "230 dead as storm batters Europe".

While everyone has been spreading the news, our data has found no indication of widespread infection. Hmmm... either WinPatrol must really be doing something right or this threat isn’t all that widespread.

Are attachments like this still getting through Email filters? Are people downloading attachments with names like, video.exe, full video.exe, Read More.exe, Full Text.exe or Full Clip.exe to see new stories? I say no. At least not to the extent deserving of this weekends attention.

I'm ready to take on the storm. I suspect most of the E-mail was generated by spam-bots and not via actual infections. Instead of a successful Trojan or worm I see this as nothing more than a very successful spam campaign.