Reply #4: The way Sobig works

[Az]

Sobig is a Trojan. You need to run it for it to infect your system. If you receive an email with an attachment that you did not request or do not know anything about do not open it.

Once you run the attachment Sobig creates what is called an SMTP server on your system. This enables Sobig to email things from your system without you noticing. It then searches your system for any sort of email address list. It takes any addresses it finds and mails itself to these names. Thus starting the cycle over again.

The damage other than the infection is that Sobig is scanning your system for passwords and financial details. It sends this information out to its programmer who may do some not so nice things with your identity.

For whatever reason the hacker that coded this bug set it to terminate on Sept 10. Though it actually will not spread after the 9th it deactivates on the 10th.