A new variant of the Sober worm has been given a political twist and is filling inboxes across the globe with right-wing spam messages. The new worm, Sober-Q, has effectively turned infected PCs into ‘spam machines’ (Techwhack News). The worm sends out email containing links to webpages advancing far-right German politics.
Political viruses are not new. In 2004 the Nachi B worm overwrote the files of Windows machines with an HTML page. It contained what, on first inspection, appeared random dates. When the dates were deciphered by an anti-virus company it was found they corresponded to events in South East Asia during World War II, such as the bombing of Hirsohima and Nagasaki. Nachi B’s HTML message ended with the legend ‘Let History Tell Future!’, in what appeared to be an unrefined comment on current US foreign policy. In early 2005, a mass-mailing email virus contained messages calling for support for the Fathers 4 Justice campaign. Fathers 4 Justice denied links to the virus.
Sober-Q is going for a subtle tactic. Rather than presenting a dogmatic page of text at source, it aims to steer users of infected PCs onto otherwise remote web pages that present a far-right agenda. According to anti-virus company McAfee Inc., the primary aim of Sober Q is to spew out information rather than cause harm to infected machines. This is immaterial to affected users, and exemplifies the insidious nature of political viruses and those who write them.