Tomorrow is D-Day for a dangerous computer virus which
has spread throughout the world via email and is
programmed to destroy PC files on February 3.
Email messages with risque subjects like "give me a
kiss" and "school girl fantasies" have helped to
spread the virus across about 300,000 computers
worldwide according to a taskforce set up to monitor
the threat.
The virus is known under several different names
including Blackworm, Nyxem, CME-24, Blackmal, Kama
Sutra and MyWife.
The Blackworm taskforce, which comprises a large
number of security organisations, warns that although
those with recently updated anti-virus and
anti-spyware should be protected from attacks, the
virus was built to disable a number of security
packages. This means that those PCs that were already
infected before the most recent anti-virus signatures
were downloaded could still be vulnerable.
Once a PC is infected, the virus will replicate and
send itself to all of the user's email contacts and
will then lie dormant until February 3. On this date
it will begin destroying a wide range of files
including Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Acrobat on
infected machines. If it is not removed, it will
attack again on the third day of each month going
forward.
According to computer emergency response team AusCERT,
the virus has attracted so much attention because it
is the first to carry such a destructive payload for
quite some time.
"Recent movement has been away from purely destructive
worms towards for-profit viruses like keystroke
loggers for and bot net clients," said security
analyst, Chris Horsley.
AusCERT has been tracking its frequency in Australia
and said that based on worldwide infection figures, it
estimated that about 1000 PCs in Australia would be
affected.
"The worst affected regions are India, Peru and the
US," it said.
AusCERT recommends applying strong passwords to all
user accounts, updated anti-virus and anti-spyware
protection, and the use of a firewall.
Another way of avoiding the virus is to operate a PC
under a limited account rather than administrator
account because this means the malware doesn't have
access to the privileges needed to spread and execute,
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