F-Secure Virus Descriptions : Choke

NAME:	Choke
ALIAS:	I-Worm.Choke, Win32.Choke, w32/Choke

Choke is a worm that utilises MSN Messenger for spreading. It sends itself using filenames like 'ShootPresidentBUSH.exe', 'choke.exe' and 'George.W.Bush@whitehouse.gov' as username.

When executed it copies itself to 'c:\choke.exe' and creates a key in the registry under

 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run'

with the name 'Choke' and the value 'c:\choke.exe -blahhh' to ensure that it will be started at every system startup. After this it exits with and error message saying 'This program needs Flash 6.5 to run!'

It creates a file 'c:\about.txt' with this content:

 Choke , Copyright Ž 1886  ... A MAD CHRISTIAN
 ---------------------------------------
 Go talk swearwords about God
 You all will die, stupid humans.
 You fools didn't see what you have done
 Bye slut, go talk shit about me.
 (Call me a 'psychophatt', but I respect the Creator of life...)
 ' Consider your earth '

The worm sends messages to random ICQ users (using 'xxxxxxx@pager.icq.com') saying:

 'Micro$oft invites you to use MSN Messenger!'

F-Secure Anti-Virus with the latest updates detects and removes it. To remove it it's enough to delete the file 'c:\choke.exe'. If it's locked exit to DOS first then delete it.

[Analysis: Gergely Erdelyi, F-Secure Corp.; June 2001]