PSA: Stay Away From the ‘Here You Have’ E-mail Virus

  • Share
  • Read Later

There’s a big e-mail virus making its way around the internet—”the first large outbreak of this type in nearly a decade,” according to IDG News.

There are a few different versions of the e-mail, but the most common one contains the subject “Here you have” along with the following message:

Hello:

This is The Document I told you about,you can find it Here.
hxxp://malicious-link-omitted/library/PDF_Document21.025542010.pdf

Please check it and reply as soon as possible.

Cheers,”

There’s also a similar message with the subject “Just for you,” as well as a much less tricky e-mail that contains “This is The Free Download Sex Movies,you can find it Here” followed by a link to a WMV file.

The links inside the malicious e-mails appear to contain PDF files, though in actuality they link to a screen saver file housed on a server in the UK. If a person downloads and opens the file, the virus infects the computer and re-mails itself out to everyone in that person’s contact list.

So the danger is that you could potentially get an e-mail from someone you know, linking to a supposed file for you to download.

Apparently the virus file has been removed from the UK website, but not before spreading itself to an unknown number of computers, mostly through Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail program.

Most antivirus programs are now detecting and blocking the virus, though Symantec’s David Cowings warns that this e-mail worm appears to be “similar to the ILoveYou and Anna Kournikova worms, which spread in 2000 and 2001,” according to IDG.

More on Techland: How to Quickly Tune Up Your PC