Summary

Mimail.J is an email worm which disguises itself as an email from Paypal on-line payment service and tries to steal credit card information. It arrives with the subject "IMPORTANT" and attachment named www.paypal.com.pif

Except from some textual content the worm's code is almost exactly the same as Mimail.I

Mimail.I: http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/mimail_i.shtml

Disinfection

Manual disinfection of an Mimail.J infected computer consists of the following steps:

1, Remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\SvcHost32]

2, Restart the computer

3, Delete '%WinDir%\svchost32.exe' (where %WinDir% is the Windows Directory, typically c:\windows\ or c:\winnt)

Additional Details

Mimail.J was found on November 17th, 2003. As Mimail.J is packed with a non-modified version of UPX, it is a recompiled version with minimal changes in its code. It arrives in email that looks as follows:

From: "PayPal.com" Do_Not_Reply@paypal.com Subject: IMPORTANT
Attachment: www.paypal.com.pif
Dear PayPal member,
We regret to inform you that your account is about to be expired in next five business days. To avoid suspension of your account you have to reactivate it by providing us with your personal information.
To update your personal profile and continue using PayPal services you have to run the attached application to this email. Just run it and follow the instructions.
IMPORTANT! If you ignore this alert, your account will be suspended in next five business days and you will not be able to use PayPal anymore.
Thank you for using PayPal.

Please note that messages received with a subject "Problems with your PayPal account" and attachment named InfoUpdate.exe were seeded by Mimail author. The worm does not use this subject and attachment name when spreading from an infected computer.

The address collection routine is the same as in the previous variant.

The mail spreading routine is the same as in the previous variant.

Payload

Payload

Like Mimail.I: The worm displays a fake Paypal form. The form closely resembles the look of PayPal's website. This way the worm tries to fool the users to enter their credit card information, which is mailed to certain email addresses.

This new variant, in addition, asks for personal information in a form like shown below:



System Infection

Same as in Mimail.I

Detection

Detection of Mimail.J in F-Secure Anti-Virus was published on November 18th, 2003 in update:

[FSAV_Database_Version]
Version=2003-11-18_01

Technical Details: Gergely Erdelyi and Ero Carrera, November 17th, 2003;