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Yahoo e-mail Attacked By Yamanner Worm

JS.Yamanner is out, infecting Yahoo e-mail accounts and self-propagating to all contacts in the Yahoo address book.

Yahoo Inc. announced that its e-mail service is threatened by a worm, targeting yahoo e-mail user accounts. Once it installs itself, it then propagates and sends all contacts in your Yahoo address book to a third party server (www.av3.net/index.htm), playing the role of adware.

The subject of the hazardous message is "New Graphic Site" from "av3@yahoo.com," and if receivers click on the e-mail, Yamanner or JS.Yamanner then sets up on the PC, next phase being it will replicate the initial message and send it to all contacts in the address book.

Symantec Corp. considers this virus as considerably dangerous since it does not require the opening of attachments or clicking links inside the malware e-mail message; Yamanner only need users to open the e-mail message with the abovementioned "New Graphic Site," in order to harm computer integrity.

Yahoo representative Kelley Podboy:

"We have taken steps to resolve the issue and protect our users from further attacks of this worm. When we learn of e-mail abuse, such as a worm or other online threat, we take appropriate action. (A) solution has been automatically distributed to all Yahoo Mail customers, and requires no additional action on the part of the user."

Symantec Corp stated that "the worm cannot run on the newest version of Yahoo Mail Beta."

Yamanner exploits the embedded HTML scripts found in the internet browser.

Symantec told customers that Rapid Release Definitions >55078 can offer protection against this security threat.

The worm was named JS.Yamanner@m (Symantec), while other security companies dubbed it JS/Yamanner@MM (McAfee), or JS_YAMANER.A (Trend Micro).