Clearly the holidays are far from over.

Just days after the 64-bit malware W64_ABUL.A was detected, news regarding the sudden surge of Christmas-themed malware suddenly came out. Prolific STRATION did not miss out on the celebration, as Trend Micro detected TROJ_STRAT.IG on Christmas Day, allegedly being spammed via holiday-themed email messages.

Users should thus be wary when opening cute, warm-and-fuzzy holiday greetings, especially if they come from unexpected sources. In these times when even a seemingly harmless PowerPoint presentation or Word document could exploit vulnerabilities to drop malicious files into a recipient’s system… well, let’s just say these are the “gifts” we definitely do not want to receive.