Your Orkut profile may be deleted

A new malware is leading Orkut users to spam messages that ultimately corrupts their computer, data

A new malware is leading Orkut users to spam messages that ultimately corrupts their computer, data

Rohit Sarkar, a 3D animation designer, was taken aback when he received a mail from his favourite social

Ma(i)levolent: Rohit Sarkar (left) and Badal Srivastavau00a0

networking website Orkut, saying his profile would be deleted.

The mail from orkut.com said that his profile was reported to be containing illegal information, and will be blocked in the next 48 hours. It led him to a link, which according to the e-mail would save his account. When Rohit clicked on the link his computer collapsed within hours and all his data was corrupted.

A lot of Orkut users are being targeted by cyber crooks daily through such malware-loaded spam. Spoofed emails, claiming to be sent by Orkut inform the recipient that their account was sending out spam to other users.

Orkut is a Google-owned social networking service with most users located in Brazil and India. India contribute around 18 per cent of Orkut users. It recently ranked 21st in Compete.com's top 25 social networking sites, with more than 5 million monthly visits in January of 2009.

Another victim Badal Srivastava said, "I lost important data after clicking on the spam link."

Recipients are given 48 hours to activate their profile by clicking the given link. Upon clicking the link they are re-directed to a Website where they are prompted to download a file, which is found to be a malware detected as TROJ_DLOADER.WKV.

International cyber security agency Trend Micro said, "TROJ_DLOADER.WKV terminates antivirus applications on the target system. This routine is possibly done to prevent antivirus software from detecting files that this Trojan downloads from malicious URLs, which are inaccessible."

You've got mailu00a0

Subject: Problems with your profile. Dear user, Your profile was reported to be containing illegal information, and will be blocked in the next 48 hours. You are probably using non-authorized or copyrighted information. To see all the information and instructions required to normalize your account, click here. This will be the last notification sent from our system, and in case you do not perform any required action, your profile will be blocked definitely. ATTENTION: your request will be analyzed by our team and will be subject for approval.