Kaspersky warns of crossover IM worm

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Businesses are at risk from a new breed of IM worms that pose a huge danger to corporate networks, according to experts from anti-virus company Kaspersky Labs.

Traditional threats such as the Bropia, Kelvia and Prex worms, which targeted single IM networks like MSN will soon be killed off. But their demise will make way for an evolved terror that spreads via multiple IM networks.

As IM becomes a more popular form of communication in both the home and in the workplace, this is serious issue organisations can't afford to ignore. According to statistics from IDC, more than 28 million business users worldwide sent almost one billion messages daily in 2005. AOL has also suggested than almost a quarter of UK IM users send as many, if not more, IM messages than they do emails.

"The appearance of IRCBot.lo, which represents the ultimate in IM worm functionality, demonstrates that IM is an infection vector which has not yet been exhausted, "said Roel Schouwenberg, senior research engineer at Kaspersky Labs.

"The worrying thing about IM worms like IRCBot.lo is the code that is used to write them can be easily copied, potentially resulting in a significant increase in IRCBots which can spread links across all major IM networks. It therefore seems likely that we may start to see reports of other IM networks being increasingly targeted in the future."

Schouwenberg said this new advent of worms meant that businesses must ensure that they incorporate standards and guidelines regarding the deployment and use of IM into their IT security policies. He also advised all users to take a number of basic precautions, such as only downloading files from trusted sources, ensuring current anti-virus and firewall protection

"In most cases, an IM worm should not be viewed as a stand alone piece of malware, but rather as a slave which is used to help the IRCBot spread."

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