"Peachy", a virus which attacks the PDF

Peachy is an inoffensive mail virus, as explained on Secuser news, which however launches a contamination alert. The new thing is that this virus affects for the first time the format of PDF files. Until now, this format was famous for being reliable, to such an extent that anti-virus editors didn’t get the occasion to worry about its protection.

Peachy, as noted on the website, is a message randomly untitled « You have one minute to find the peach », « Find the peach », « Find », « Peach » or « Joke », which includes an attached file also randomly named find.pdf, peach.pdf, find the peach.pdf, find_the_peach.pdf, joke.pdf or search.pdf, and it looks like a game.

If the Acrobat and Outlook software are installed on your computer, if you open this PDF file, and you double click on a note of the document in order to have the solution of the game, a VBScript script is run and automatically sends the infected PDF file to a maximum of 100 contacts registered in your address book. However, the virus has no effect on the computers equipped with the sole free drive Acrobat Reader.

Peachy has no destroying effect. It is a demonstration showing how a PDF file can be used as an efficient method to make a VBScript potentially dangerous. However, since the author makes available the code at the origin of the virus on its website, hostile variants are to be feared. You can have a look on the website « Secuser News » in order to see how you can get rid of this virus.