An old virus that is still in the wild and coincidently mails out the sulfnbk.exe file may see blasé users infected following the recent virus hoax that contained the same file.
The PE_MAGISTR.A email virus, which was first detected in March, searches for files of a certain size on a recipient's PC and mails them to other users in the Microsoft Outlook address book.
Since the usually harmless windows file sulfnk.exe is a perfect match in size, it often infects the file and then mails it out, according to Trend Micro Australia's Andy Liou.
"It doesn't appear that someone has extended the virus hoax. It's purely coincidence that that it uses that file," Liou said.
"But this virus is still number one of our Top 10 list," he added.
The worry is that with the hoax sulfnbk.exe virus fresh in people's minds, they may be blasé if the PE_MAGISTR.A virus with sulfnbk.exe attachment does infiltrate their in-box.
"We're still concerned about it [PE_MAGISTR.A]," Liou said. "People are still getting infected by it."
Liou describes it as a very destructive virus, which spreads via shared drive as well as email.
"We're still worried about it purely because most people protect email but are still quite lax about protecting every single desktop they have," he said.
The virus is also very difficult to get rid of because of the amount of encrypted codes it uses, according to Liou.
The hoax email duped an untold number of people into deleting the sulfnbk.exe file from their hard drives.
In this regard, if you get either a hoax warning or an email with this attachment name, it is suggested that you delete both emails, according to Trend Micro.
