Worm disguised as iTunes threatens music fans

By Steve Malone

Posted on 22 Jul 2005 at 10:30

A new variant of the Opanki worm has emerged that targets music fans by claiming to be Apple's iTunes program. Security company Trend Micro, which issued the alert points out that 'users may be tricked into thinking that this worm is associated with a legitimate product'.

The message arrives as an instant messenger chat file with the heading, 'this picture never gets old' and a link to a file called itunes.exe. If the user is unwary enough to click on the link, the worm instead downloads various bits of adware and opens a link to an IRC server that will doubtless recruit the machine into a zombie army either to use as a spam server or take part in a dOS attack.

Although claiming to be an iTunes program, the worm is only targeting Windows PCs. Trend Micro says that the overall threat is low as it has detected few infected machines in the wild.

Anyone who feels they have been infected by the worm can get the fix at the Steve Malone