New Year, Christmas malware targeting inboxes

Email users are again getting the electronic age's version of coal in a stocking - holiday-season spam and malware. Researchers from F-Secure have warned of a handful of just-discovered malicious files posing as Christmas and New Year's Day greetings. One New Year's scam is part of a new spam run distributing the Warezov worm. Using a fake "Happy New Year" greeting, the scam emails contain a malicious attachment, postcard.zip, and urge recipients to click on the file to view a "holiday postcard."

Once downloaded, Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Small.edn connects to www6[dot]easeruikingandefunjs[dot]com and downloads a Warezov variant, according to a post on F-Secure's blog by Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer.

Hypponen said a backdoor trojan named Christmas_Puzzle.exe is posing as a holiday-themed jigsaw puzzle game. F-Secure has named the malware Trojan.Spy.Win32.Ardamax.e.

F-Secure also warned of a malicious PowerPoint file named Christmas+Blessing-4.ppt, which uses a flaw in Office that Microsoft patched in March to drop and execute two embedded programs. The malware poses as a Christmas-themed slideshow.