Below is a report from CNN on the worm coming out Friday.
When you guys post about a virus, worm or whatever, it would be really
helpful if you would post relevant info about it, instead of just saying
there is a virus coming, so watch out.
Cheers.
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- "There are a lot of people who are going to be
very unhappy on the third of February," said Professor Merrick Furst from
the Georgia
Tech College of Computing.
That's when the Kama Sutra computer worm will begin destroying critical
files on infected computers. And hundreds of thousands of machines may have
the
worm lurking within their Windows operating system, ready to be unleashed on
February 3 and the third of every month thereafter.
Experts say Windows Office documents, Word documents, Excel spread sheets,
and PDFs (portable document format) are among the files that will be
"overwritten."
That means the data will be changed and corrupted, and the original
information will no longer be accessible.
While files that have simply been deleted can sometimes be recovered;
overwritten files are usually lost for good.
This malicious software entices computer users with promises of sexy
pictures, with e-mail subject lines ranging from "School girl fantasies gone
bad" to
"Hot Movie" to "Crazy illegal Sex!" and "Kama Sutra pics." (
Watch how the worm seduces PC users -- 1:36)
This worm is described as "old fashioned" in several ways.
First, it relies on the oldest trick in the book, a computer user's desire
to see nasty pictures, to get them to take an action.
"With the Kama Sutra worm, this is a traditional style worm, meaning that it
takes user interaction in order to become infected; someone has to double
click
on a file attachment, and then it does some type of malicious behavior, such
as, in this case destroying a folder or a file," said Alain Sergile, a
security
expert at Internet Security Systems (ISS) in Atlanta.
Because the worm's destructive payload is delayed until the third of the
month, many users may have infected their machines, but because neither
dirty pictures
nor computer problems resulted, simply forgotten that they ever clicked on
the attachment.
The worm, which also goes by the names Blackworm, Blackmal, and Nyxem, has
been spreading since January 16. It is capable of infecting Windows XP,
Windows
2000, Windows 98 and Windows ME operating systems.
"This is a really damaging worm. This is not one of those worms that is
interested in having access to your machine for purposes later on. This worm
will
really damage your machine," Georgia Tech's Furst said.
Furst says the worm has spread to a lot of military addresses on the
Internet (.mil), but mostly to ISPs (Internet Service Providers), meaning
most of those
infected are probably home users.
The computer security company LURHQ reports more than 600,000 machines
around the world have been infected.
With a little time before the third of the month trigger, most Windows users
still have the ability to cleanse their computer of Kama Sutra before any
information
is destroyed.
Some antivirus software can eliminate the virus. Users should make sure
their antivirus and antispyware software is up to date and to scan their
computers
for malicious programs that may have been surreptitiously installed on their
machines.
However, not all antivirus programs are effective. Problems running
antivirus software may be one sign your computer has been infected. Joe
Stewart of LURHQ
says like many recent worms, Kama Sutra attempts to disable antivirus
software when it is attacking a machine.
And even for home computer users who have never taken such precautions
before, security experts say now would be a good time to back up your most
important
data, like financial information and family photographs, to CDs, DVDs, zip
drives, or an external hard drive that you know is worm and virus free.
Unlike a lot of malware that exploits vulnerabilities in the Windows
operating system, there is no "patch" that can be downloaded to ward off
Kama Sutra.
"This is something that is not inherent in the operating system," Sergile
said.
"Unfortunately, there is no way to patch user ignorance, and the way this
virus propagates is through user ignorance," he said.
Sergile also says home users need to be aggressive about questioning e-mail
messages and attachments, even if it appears they are coming from
colleagues,
friends, or relatives. Many e-mail viruses spread by forwarding themselves
to everyone in a user's e-mail address book.
"So while you might think it is coming from cousin Alice, most likely cousin
Alice is not going to send you something that says 'Hey look at these
pictures
with naked people.' So that should be your first clue that a virus is
propagating and you'd be well served to call cousin Alice to let her know
that she
is [unknowingly] sending out this type of e-mail," Sergile said.
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