Santa worm coming to town

A new worm attack – which pretends to take users to a harmless Santa Claus website – is underway and pestering users of AOL, MSN, Windows Messenger and Yahoo instant messaging.

Known as IM.GiftCom.All, the worm has taken infected users to a site that installs a rootkit onto PCs. The worm then took control of buddy lists, broadcasting to all available recipients.

IM Logic has classified the worm as a "medium" threat.

Art Gilliland, vice president of products for IM Logic, said the worm has a keystroke logger and can change registries, but has yet to attempt to make an external connection.

"With this one, I don't think it's going to try to," he said.

www.imlogic.com