New Worm Thrives on Potter Mania!

Sophos has warned against a new computer worm, which is feeding on the fresh lease of 'Potter mania' across the globe, thanks to the impending release of J K Rowling's last, and the looming premiere of the fifth of the wildly popular series.

The worm named 'W32/Hairy-A' is capable of automatically infecting users' PCs when they plug-in USB drives carrying a file that poses as a copy of that much awaited novel, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".

If the USB drives are allowed to 'auto-run', users would see a file called HarryPotter-TheDeathlyHallows.doc.

Open this Word document, and it will simply say, "Harry Potter is dead." The worm would then look for other removable drives to infect.

And, it will create a whole lot of new users based on the main characters of Rowling's books. When users log in, they will see the following:

read and repent
the end is near
repent from your evil ways O Ye folks
lest you burn in hell... JK Rowling especially

Apart from this, whenever users open Internet Explorer, they will be redirected to an Amazon.com Web page, selling parodies of Potter books, for instance, "Harry Putter and the Chamber of Cheesecakes".

Commenting on the worm, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant, Sophos, said such social engineering is a trick dastardly enough even for Lord Voldemort...

Cluley remarked that the Hairy worm belongs to the 'old school' as it appears to have been written more as a vehicle to show-off, rather than for any financial gains.

Meanwhile, Sophos claims it has been upholding the cause of the residents of Hogwarts School by automatically protecting customers from this worm since 19:42 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on 27 June 2007.