New Sober Worm Begins to Spread

The latest incarnation of the Sober worm is making its way across the Internet, prompting security firm McAfee to call the Sober.p variant a "medium risk" worm. This version attempts to prey on World Cup fans by offering tickets to the 2006 games in Germany. Both German and English versions of the worm have been found.

As with previous Sober versions, the e-mail comes with a zipped attachment that contains the infected file. Like with most worms, it requires the file to be executed in order for a computer to become infected. McAfee said that users of its VirusScan software have been protected from this threat since March of this year.