Apple spams users with virus

NEWS Apple's Swedish headquarters has sent out an infamous email virus to its customers and resellers. Apple intended to send out a promotional screensaver yesterday via email to several hundred users and re-sellers, but the email file, entitled ScreenSaverSE.new.xls, turned out to contain the X97M.Laroux.gen macro virus. About 20 minutes later the same users received an email from Apple alerting them not to open the attachment. The warning said: "Virus warning! The attachment we sent earlier appears to contain a virus. We ask you to take a note of this and hope you have not been infected. We'll send you the appropriate document as soon as possible, With Kind Regards, Apple." Andre Post, chief researcher at Symantec anti-virus labs said innocent looking files can easily contain viruses: "Technically, screensavers are normal .exe files just like any other, which means they are just as safe or unsafe." He added that many virus writers are increasingly trying to disguise their malware as screensavers: "It has become very common for virus writers to create email worms which present themselves as a cool screensaver by using the ".scr" extension in a bid to entice the novice user to run the attachment." But in this case, Apple had accidentally sent out an infected file instead of the material intended. An Apple spokewoman in Sweden confirmed the virus gaffe to silicon.com but claimed very few customers were infected.