USB Flash Drive Worm LiarVB-A Spreads Aids Info

Sophos’ security experts have disclosed details of a worm called LiarVB-A that copies itself onto removable drives, such as USB Flash memory and optical devices, and also spreads itself via network shares.

The worm is not designed to generate income, contrary to the most of the malware. Instead, LiarVB-A attempts to spread information about Aids and HIV reportedly.

“It creates a hidden file called ‘autorun.inf’ to ensure that a copy of the worm is run the next time the drive is connected to a Windows PC. Once it has infected a system, it drops an HTML file containing a message about Aids and HIV to the user’s drive,” according to the VuNet’s report.

Although the message in HTML file claims that the worm won’t harm your PC, experts say the LiarVB-A makes changes to a system’s settings and overwrites files.

Sophos advises the users of USB memory sticks and other removable drives to disable the autorun option in Windows, in order to prevent the worm from automatically launching when the device is attached to a personal computer.