German right-wing extremists are behind another plague of email spam.
If your inbox was flooded over the weekend with odd German messages, you're not alone. A new spam epidemic broke out online sometime late Saturday, and some users have reported getting thousands of short emails with links to a variety of extreme right- wing Web sites, as well as regular news sites like SPIEGEL Online and the Web site of Die Tageszeitung. While the exact source of the virus isn't known, it appears to be aimed at voters in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westfalia, the country's most populous state, where elections are due next Sunday. It is apparently meant to promote the National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD, a party at the extreme right wing of the political spectrum in Germany.
The messages come with subject lines like "Bloody Self-Justice," " Multi-Kulturell = Multi-Kriminell" or "Turkey in the EU", and have a short message saying "read for yourself" followed by the links. The general themes are anti-immigrant, though many of the articles linked from SPIEGEL Online and other reputable news sites, would have to be willfully misread to be seen as promoting racist or anti-immigrant views.
It's not clear exactly who is behind the virus -- though it seems likely it has something to do with the German NPD -- but the method they are using is clear. The culprit is the Sober.Q virus, the newest version of the Sober virus, a worm that infects address books and sends a copy of itself to all the entries. Various security firms have released warnings that they received hundreds of thousands of Sober.Q emails within the first 24 hours of the virus' outbreak.
Scott Chasin, an email security expert, told ZD Net Australia that the virus basically gives its author (or authors) a "megaphone to distribute messages of hate." Computers infected with the Sober virus might not know it, and the virus is programmed to lay silent until an appointed spam attack time. "Spam has been traditionally regarded as annoying messages that promote Viagra, porn and low cost mortgages... But for the past year we have seen a trend in which worm authors are using spam not to hawk goods, but as a tool for political propaganda," said Chasin. The spam's distribution takes place via computers infected with the Sober-virus -- arguably the most successful, albeit regrettable, German high-tech export in years. Sober carries its own SMTP-mailserver, which the right- wing hackers use to open a backdoor in the Windows operating system in order to distribute their propaganda spam.
The apparent senders of the spam-mails actually have nothing to do with it: Sober steals mail-addresses from infected computers and distributes itself in the name of any mail-address it can find. Another thing. Sober.Q runs on computers previously infected by an earlier version of the virus, Sober.P, which appeared only a week ago disguised as an email proclaiming free tickets to the Soccer Cup in 2006. That virus, which was able to switch into German or English, was particularly effective in soccer-crazed Germany, which will be hosting the cup matches. Some suspect that the World Cup virus was laying the ground-work for this current attack. Sober.P went dormant about a week ago, during which time the virus' authors may have been updating it to send out hate spam. The themes that the spam covers -- immigration, multi-culturalism -- are up-to-the-minute current in German politics. This new virus is also similar to one that popped up in inboxes around the world last summer, in which German hate groups also used the tactics of Viagra spammers to spread racist propaganda. That virus, known as Sober.G, bombarded email addresses with similar messages in the run up to the European Union elections.
Accounts at email services like Yahoo and Gmail have been attacked, as well corporate mail-accounts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland -- some of which, facing message counts of up 10,000 per account, are at the brink of collapse.
The bad news is that most users wouldn't even know if they were infected. Even getting the spam doesn't necessarily mean your computer has the virus. At the moment, there is nothing even those who do know they are infected can do against a spam attack except start hitting the delete button. Luckily, email providers and anti-virus software firms are already busy updating their software to fight this nasty new threat. (1 p.m. CET)
Uzbekistan Unrest
While many former Soviet states have peacefully been making the difficult transition to democracy over the last year, Uzbekistan seems to be a sad exception. A weekend of violence led to the deaths of close to 700 people and on Monday reports indicate that gunfire is continuing. The unrest began last Friday when a popular uprising in the city of Andijan was violently put down by government troops, reportedly leading to the death of up to 500 people. Human rights organizations have also reported up to 200 deaths as the violence spread to other Uzbek towns, such as nearby Korasuv. Both Andijan and Korasuv have since been sealed off by government forces. If the reports are accurate, the crackdown is the bloodiest since the massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989. Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov said that 10 soldiers and many protesters were killed during the uprising in Andijan, and blamed the unrest on Islamic extremists. Reports from locals claim that the uprising was a mass upsurge of dissatisfaction with the authoritarian government, which was established in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Accurate information out of Uzbekistan, however, is difficult to come as the dictatorial government heavily restricts the flow of information. (11 a.m. CET)
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