Everyone’s aflutter with the launch of Google’s IM service but lest we forget, there are other players in this peculiar little game. Microsoft has had its own instant messaging service for quite some time. Something new crawled into the Microsoft instant messenger too, something vile and unclean and it uses your own language against you.
This ugly little burrower known as Kelvir.HI is a variant on the Kelvir that reared its ugly little head back in February. This little bugger added some nice little chutzpah though. This one actually checks your configurations to determine the language being used and then send you a nice little message in your own language. “haha I found your picture!” is the key phrase and a link goes with it. You click on the link and then lots of nasty things happen.
The Symantec advisory says this little worm affects systems running pretty much everything from Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.
It shows the vile people developing these vile programs are getting more clever with their development and according to C|Net, it’s only going to get worse. In talking to David Jaros of Akonix Systems, C|Net quoted him saying “They go after not only English speakers, but also other languages. I think we will definitely see more worms that cast a wider net.”
In some ways, this isn’t anything new. It just means users of MSN’s instant messaging service have to be more careful of what they do as more and more worms and other maliciousness works its way into people’s computers .
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
