Mimail.L

Summary

Mimail.L worm was found on 1st of December, 2003. It is a variant of the Mimail worm family.

This worm sends messages which pretend to be very personal and contain pictures. The attached file is a ZIP that contains the worm.

The other type of message it sends will look like the recipients credit card would be billed for buying child porn, possibly scaring and confusing the recipients.

Disinfection & Removal

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

1, Remove the registry value

[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\France]
			

2, Restart the computer

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

Technical Details

The worm spreads in UPX packed form. The unpacked worm body is 24608 bytes in size and was written in C language.

Email Spreading

The virus sends two types of messages. One of them is sent with an infected attachment with the following text:

Hi Greg its Wendy. 

I was shocked, when I found out that it wasn't you but your
 twin brother!!!  That's amazing, you're as like as two
 peas. No one in bed is better than you Greg. I remember, I
 remember everything very well, that promised you to tell
 how it was, I'll give you a call today after 9. 
 
 <explicit content removed> 

I'm so thankful to you, for acquainted me to your brother.
 I think we can do i t on the next Saturday all three
 together? What do you think? O yes, as you wanted I've made
 a few pictures check them out in archive, I hope they will
 excite you, and you will dream of our new meeting...
 Wendy.

Attachment: wendy.zip
			

The other message when sent by the virus does not contain any attachment but the worm has reportedly been seeded with the following text and an attachment called 'test.exe':

Good afternoon,
 We are going to bill your credit card for amount of $22.95
 on a weekly basis.  Free pack of child porn CDs is already
 on the way to your billing address.  If you want to cancel
 membership and your CD pack please email order and credit
 card details to security@europe.spamhaus.org 
 
 Are you ready for all types of underage porn?  We have the
 best selection for every taste!  Just click the secret
 links below and have fun: 

 www.authorizenet.com
 disney.go.com
 www.spamcop.net
 www.carderplanet.net
 www.cardcops.com
 www.register.com
 www.spews.org
 www.spamhaus.org


 Nude boys under 16!
 Nude girls under 16!
 Incest, a daddy & a daughter!
 We have everything you have ever dreamed for!
 

This message is meant to scare and confuse the recipient and probably to hurt the reputation of the organizations mentioned in the mail.

The worm collects email addresses from files on the infected computer. It recursively searches through the user's document folders and looks into all the files whose extension is not on the following list:

"bmp"
 "jpg"
 "gif"
 "exe"
 "dll"
 "avi"
 "mpg"
 "mp3"
 "vxd"
 "ocx"
 "psd"
 "tif"
 "zip"
 "rar"
 "pdf"
 "cab"
 "wav"
 "com"
 

Using its own SMTP engine it sends emails with the malicious attachment. To find the SMTP server of the target email address the worm does an MX lookup using a predefined public DNS server.

System Infection

When started, Mimail.L first copies itself to the Windows Directory as 'svchost.exe'. This copy is added to the registry as

[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\France]
			

to make sure the worm is started when Windows starts.

The worm creates several temporary files in the Windows directory:

%WinDir%\x8wui12s.tmp - worm packed into a ZIP file
 %WinDir%\xu39reu.tmp  - copy of the worm
 %WinDir%\xu298da.tmp  - list of collected email addresses
 

Payload

Computers infected with Mimail.L perform Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks on the following sites:

www.authorizenet.com
 disney.go.com
 www.spamcop.net
 www.carderplanet.net
 www.cardcops.com
 www.register.com
 www.spews.org
 www.spamhaus.org
 

Mimail.L also contains this text which is never shown:

*** Made in France. ***
 virmakers
 

Detection

Detection in F-Secure Anti-Virus was published in update number:

Detection Type: PC
Database: 2003-12-01_03

Description Created: Mikko Hypponen, Katrin Tocheva, December 1st, 2003
Technical Details: Gergely Erdelyi, December 1st, 2003