A new worm promises to show users photos of a nude soccer match, but it's a disappointing email address, sucker

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You've got to give attackers credit: They know how to make users click on an email.

This week, a new worm dubbed W32/Sixem-A is circulating through e-mailboxes all over the world, promising the two most frequently surfed topics on the Web: sports and nudity. The bug, which usually arrives in an email carrying the subject line "Naked World Cup game set," has reportedly infected a few enterprises, though most antivirus vendors have patched the problem with updates.

W32/Sixem-A is a messaging worm that harvests email addresses found on the infected computer and then uses its own email engine to send itself to those systems as well, according to vulnerability reports. It behaves much like the other "World Cup" worm, Banwarum-A, which promised tickets to the games last month. (See New Worm Promises World Cup Tickets.)

The worm, which is triggered when a user clicks on an executable file disguised as a JPG photo attachment, also has been seen carrying email subject lines such as "Soccer fans killed five teens," "Crazy soccer fans," and "My tricks for you."

Antivirus vendors such as Sophos and Symantec have rated the worm's threat as "low." Widely spread throughout an enterprise, the bug could overload email systems and affect network performance, but so far the infection has not reached enough computers to create much of a problem, they say.

World Cup play has continued throughout the spread of the worm, and so far, most of the players have kept their clothes on.

— Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading

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About the Author(s)

Tim Wilson, Editor in Chief, Dark Reading

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Tim Wilson is Editor in Chief and co-founder of Dark Reading.com, UBM Tech's online community for information security professionals. He is responsible for managing the site, assigning and editing content, and writing breaking news stories. Wilson has been recognized as one of the top cyber security journalists in the US in voting among his peers, conducted by the SANS Institute. In 2011 he was named one of the 50 Most Powerful Voices in Security by SYS-CON Media.

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