'Paris Hilton' emails may be infected by virus.

SophosLabs are warning users to be wary of emails containing references to Paris Hilton after two different worms have been discovered claiming to contain adult footage of the society heiress.

The new Sober-K and Ahker-C worms can masquerade as X-rated videos of the popular celebrity.

The Sober-K, which is spreading in the wild, bulk mails itself using a variety of different subject lines including 'Paris Hilton, pure!' and "Paris Hilton Sex Videos'. It can send itself in either German or English language, depending on whether it believes the recipients email address to be owned by a German or English speaker.

The Ahker-C worm sends itself using the subject line "Paris Hilton ... download it!" and an attached file called

"ParisXXX.zip'. This worm attempts to disable anti-virus and firewall software running on the computer, potentially opening up the PC to further attack by hackers and malware. It also tries to block access to a number of websites.

Comment:

Paris Hilton is, according to some search engine companies, the most commonly searched for female celebrity on the internet. Interest in her is huge, so if s no surprise that virus writers have tried to use her as bait.

A third new worm--Derdero-A--can send itself using a variety of email subject lines including 'AHKER.C Alert".

www.sophos.com