The W32/Hairy-A worm poses as a file containing a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the eagerly-anticipated final novel in the Harry Potter series, due out on 21 July.
The infected file normally comes on infected USB drives. If users plug these drives into their Windows PCs they are liable to infect their machines, especially if they have allowed USB drives to "auto-run".
Infected drives contain a file called HarryPotter-TheDeathlyHallows.doc, a word document that contains nothing besides the phrase "Harry Potter is dead", instead of the hoped-for transcript. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the worm begins casting its malign spell. The worm looks for other removable drives to infect before creating a number of new users (Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley) that will be familiar names to fans of the JK Rowling books.
After logging in, users of infected machines will be confronted by the following message, which appears via a batch file:
read and repent
the end is near repent from your evil ways O Ye folks lest you burn in hell...JK Rowling especially.
The worm also changes the Internet Explorer home page of compromised machines to an Amazon.com web page selling a parody book of the teenage wizard series entitled Harry Putter and the Chamber of Cheesecakes.
Anti-virus firm Sophos describes the malware as an "old school" virus written to cause mischief and to show off, rather than to rake in illicit funds. Security experts advise users to disable the auto-run facility of Windows so removable devices such as USB keys and CD ROMs do not automatically launch when they are attached to a PC. Removal media ought to be checked for malware before use in order to guard against the increased use of USB devices and the like as a vector for malware distribution.
Last month, a hacker claimed to have obtained a transcript of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after compromising the PC of one or more workers at Bloomsbury Publishing, the publisher of the Harry Potter series. The claim was treated with skepticism both in the computer hacking underground and among Potter fans.
