Sunday, January 29, 2006
VIruses due on 3rd of feb to cause havock
Blackworm Virus
A computer virus called 'blackworm' may activate Feb. 3 and start destroying files on computers it has reached, a data security expert said.
The virus has infected about 300,000 computers in several countries and continues to spread over the Internet. The blackworm resembles early computer viruses that spread in the 1980s and 1990s in that it destroys data such as Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Power Point presentations. More recent virus attacks have typically been programmed to carry out tasks such as taking over the computer, while not destroying data on it
The blackworm overwrites the content of the file, instead of deleting the file, so users may not immediately realize the content is destroyed. The virus is programmed to overwrite the content of certain
Not the best position for the Feb 3.
People just don’t get it do they, the old style worm called Karma Sutra is written in Visual Basic, you have to open the attached file to infect your PC. Yet people still have not learned not to open files they’re not expecting.
The worm is also known as Nyxem, but was dubbed the Kama Sutra worm because although it can have a variety of subject lines and text, they are generally sexual in nature and can include references to the Kama Sutra, the ancient book about sexual positions.
The worm actually has a site which keeps count of the number of infections and according to F-Secure, that site showed 510,000 infections on Saturday, as well as being the most commonly caught virus in the last 24 hours (at the time of this writing, 16.1% and #1 ranking).
Besides setting itself to run at reboot the worm also tries to disable antivirus software and (of course) tries to propagate itself via email.
The worst thing about Nyxem is that on the 3rd of every month it is set to delete certain files, including Office files. This threat requires human interaction so once again we have to say: stop opening those attachments! How many times do people have to be told?
Source: Technews.com
