Countdown for nasty Windows virus ( BBC NEWS)

[Guest guest]

Dear Members,

I want to alert all the members who got that virus in their computers

because some unwanted emails are been posted in forum.I got this news

from www.BBCWoRLd.com

 

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Countdown for nasty Windows virus

 

Many file types from Microsoft Office are targeted by Nyxem

PC users have been urged to scan their computers before 3 February to

avoid falling victim to a destructive virus.

On that date the Nyxem virus is set to delete Word, Powerpoint, Excel

and Acrobat files on infected machines.

 

Nyxem is thought to have caught out many people by promising porn to

those who open the attachments on e-mail messages carrying the virus.

 

Anti-virus companies have stopped lots of copies, suggesting it had

infected a large number of computers.

 

Porn peril

 

The Nyxem-E Windows virus first emerged on 16 January and has been

steadily racking up victims ever since. Nyxem-E is also known as the

Blackmal, MyWife, Kama Sutra, Grew and CME-24 virus.

 

Helpfully, the virus reports every fresh infection back to an

associated website which displays the total via a counter. Late last

week the counter was reporting millions of infections, but detective

work by security firm Lurhq found that many of these reports were

bogus.

However, Lurhq reported that more than 300,000 machines are known to

have fallen victim to Nyxem-E.

 

Like many recent viruses, Nyxem tries to spread by making people open

attachments on e-mail messages that are infected with the destructive

code.

 

The subject lines and body text of the various messages Nyxem uses

vary, but many falsely claim that pornographic videos and pictures

are in the attachments.

 

On infected machines the virus raids address books to find e-mail

addresses to send itself to.

 

The virus also tries to spread by searching for machines on the same

local network as any computer it has compromised.

 

Unlike many recent viruses Nyxem is set to overwrite 11 different

types of file on infected machines on the third of every month. The

list of files to be over-written includes the most widely used sorts

of formats.

 

Separately, the virus also tries to disable anti-virus software to

stop it updating and can also disable the mouse and keyboard on

infected machines.

 

Users were being urged to update anti-virus software and to scan

their system to ensure they had not been caught out. Many anti-virus

firms have also produced tools that help clean up infected systems.

 

Jason Steer, technical consultant at mail filtering firm Ironport,

said Nyxem was a throwback to the types of viruses that used to

circulate in the early days of computer networks.

 

"If you go back 10-15 years ago viruses tended to quite malicious,"

he said. "They were going to re-format your hard disk, delete files

and so on."

 

Pete Simpson, threat lab manager at security firm Clearswift,

said: "It's a bit puzzling because script kiddies have largely left

the scene.

 

"It shows a certain intelligence in its design but what's the

motive?" he asked, "Pure vandalism does not ring true these days."

 

Both Mr Steer and Mr Simpson feared that home users would be hardest

hit by Nyxem on 3 February.

 

Most businesses, they said, now have regularly updated anti-virus

systems in place and disinfect e-mail traffic before it reaches

users' desktops.

 

By contrast many home users did not regularly patch Windows, update

anti-virus or perform full system scans to ensure their machine stays

clean. Users were also encouraged to make regular back-ups of any

files they want to preserve.

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Tarun.