"MiMail attacks have been relentless since the summer of 2003," said Ken Dunham, the director of malicious code for iDefense, a Reston, Va.-based security intelligence firm, in an e-mailed statement. "This is just one of many waves of MiMail attacks we've seen in the wild in the past few months." And that wave won't crest anytime soon, added Dunham. "MiMail stands to be one of the more regular threats to emerge in the first part of 2004." . . .
Yet another variation of the persistent MiMail worm surfaced Wednesday that not only attempts to fool users into handing over credit card information, but resets the home page of Internet Explorer to a site mocking President Bush by comparing his facial expressions to those of a chimpanzee.

Although the new variant hasn't been tagged with a definitive label by security firms -- not unusual in the early stages of a worm's discovery -- it's being dubbed MiMail.n by some, MiMail.o by others, and in even MiMail.p.

Whatever its name, the worm runs a phishing scam targeting PayPal users. The text of the e-mail, which poses as a message from the electronic payment service, claims that users will receive a credit of 10 percent of their current PayPal account balance if they register for the free offer.

When the attached .zip file is opened, however, forms appear asking for a credit card number, its PIN, a Social Security number, and even a mother's maiden name.

The link for this article located at SecurityPipeline is no longer available.