Topic: Sober worm mutates to spread neo-Nazi propaganda

[Clive]

PC Pro
German neo-Nazis have begun sending spam emails to entice the unsuspecting to racist websites.

Over the weekend a version of the Sober worm (Sober.Q) dispatched emails to millions of computer users - the quantity has been described as 'staggering' - with subject lines, in German, such as 'Multicultural = multicriminal'. The emails contain links to German-language sites.

Some small networks were overrun with the amount of spam,

'We've gotten inundated with reports of small networks getting hammered,' Scott Fendley, an incident handler for the Internet Storm Center, an organisation that tracks online threats, told Reuters.  

Some users have reported mini Denial of Service attacks due to the German spam involving the email based text messaging on cell phone and blackberry devices. Others have seen large amounts of bounced email as the virus forges the from address of email it sends out,' he added on the ISC website.

Spam has long been the favourite tool of the unscrupulous marketeer and salesman, but this is the second time recently that it has been used to spread a political message. It is reminiscent of the tactics employed by right-wing groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in the US in the 1960s, though in those days they engaged in fraudulent use of the postal service.

The attacks coincide with the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and with elections in Germany. UK anti-racism magazine Searchlight notes that more than 7,000 members of the far-right NPD recently marched in Dresden to 'commemorate' the bombing of the city in 1945. Searchlight said the march 'bore a stunning and shocking resemblance to a parade by the brown-shirted SA [armed Nazi party members] before 1933'.