Softpedia
May 16 2005

Sober is back with a vengeance!
Category: SOFTPEDIA NEWS :: Security :: Viruses

A new version of Sober is spreading hate messages

A new version of Sober emerged this week-end. If the first time Sober
tries to trick users promising free tickets to World Cup 2006, this
time the virus spreads hate messages, in English and German.

Scott Chasin, chief technology officer at e-mail security specialist
MX Logic, said the latest variant of Sober, called Sober.Q was
being uploaded to computers infected by previous variants of Sober,
which means the virus authors may have remote control over thousands
of PCs. Chasin said also that it had seen over 125,000 instances
of Sober.Q overnight Saturday and into Sunday and labeled it as a
high-severity threat.

The latest Sober variant is one of a relatively new type of “propaganda
spam,” meant to spread political messages rather than sell a product
or service.

According to Sophos, spam sent by the Trojan horse from infected
PCs uses various subject lines including: ‘Dresden Bombing Is To Be
Regretted Enormously’, ‘Armenian Genocide Plagues Ankara 90 Years
On’, ‘Dresden 1945’ and ‘Turkish Tabloid Enrages Germany with Nazi
Comparisons’.

The Trojan drops a file onto infected PCs including links to online
news stories about previous versions of the Sober worm and the text:
“Ich bin immer noch kein Spammer! Aber sollte vielleicht einer werden
:)”, which translates to “I’m not a spammer, but perhaps I should
become one :)”.

“Thousands of innocent computer users are unknowingly spewing out this
unwanted mail as the Sober author has taken control of their PCs,”
said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.