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NewLove

Classification

Category:

Malware

Type:

Worm

Aliases:

  • NewLove
  • Herbie
  • Spammer

Summary

VBS/NewLove is a destructive and polymorpic VBScript worm similar to VBS/LoveLetter. Further information about VBS/LoveLetter is available at https://www.F-Secure.com/v-descs/love.shtml

Removal

Technical Details

Variant:NewLove.A

VBS/NewLove.A uses Microsoft Outlook to spread in email messages. The message that it sends looks like this:

From: name-of-the-infected-user To: random-name-from-address-book Subject: FW: (random_file_name.ext) Body: Attachment: (random_file_name.ext).vbs

The worm replicates in an attachment with a random file name that has ".vbs" added to it. For example, "REPORT.DOC.vbs" or "Information on Jacks Birthday.txt.vbs". VBS/NewLove takes the random name from the recently opened files directory. If there is no files in that directory, it generates the name.

If the attachment is opened with the Notepad, the code of the worm can be seen:

Then the worm sends itself to each recipient in each Outlook address book - just like VBS/LoveLetter.

VBS/NewLove.A copies itself - with a random name - to the Windows System directory and to the Windows directory. It adds itself to the registry with a random key to the following registry hives:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices\

Then the worm will go through all drives and subdirectories. For each file, the worm creates a new file using the same name with an additional extension ".vbs" and deletes the original file.

After this the machine can not boot any longer.

VBS/NewLove.A was reported to be somewhat in-the-wild on 19th of May, 2000. Detection of this worm was added to F-Secure Anti-Virus on 11:00 GMT 19th of May, 2000.

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