CA warns of politically motivated virus threat

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) has warned of the Injustice e-mail worm (also known as VBS/Injustice), which appears to be politically motivated. CA`s global antivirus researchers are classifying the risk of this e-mail worm as medium risk.

E-mails with the virus would have the subject line:

"RE:Injustice"
and a message body text:
"Dear <Recipient
Did you send the attached message, I was not expecting this from you!"
and the attachment:
"injustice.TXT.vbs"

Upon execution, the worm sends itself to 25 specific e-mail addresses in the Israeli government`s Internet domain (.gov.il), followed by the opening of six instances of Internet Explorer pointed to Palestinian-specific Web sites.

Injustice then displays the following message:

"Do not worry. This is a harmless virus. It will not do any thing to your system. The intension is to help Palestinian people live in PEASE in their own land."

It propagates by sending out an e-mail to up to 50 e-mail addresses listed in the infected user`s Microsoft Outlook address book.

"Injustice is a clear example of the use of a virus threat as a vehicle to spread a politically motivated message to a mass audience," said Ian Hameroff, business manager, security solutions, CA.

CA`s global antivirus researchers will soon release a new signature for its award winning InoculateIT antivirus solution. Additional information is available at http://ca.com/virusinfo.