On February 3, one week from today, at least 700,000 computers around the world, will have much of their important data wiped out by a virus/worm called "Blackworm." The worm, delivered by e-mail, and uses the lure of sexually explicit Kama Sutra photographs to trick people into executing an attachment, is programmed to deliver its destructive payload on the third day of every month.
Once a machine gets infected, the Blackworm completely disables anti-virus and other security software before delivering a payload that destroys certain file types. Once the worm's UPDATE.EXE file is run, it destroys all Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, ZIP and PSD files on all available drives. Any post-infection clean-up is very difficult because of the way the worm disables all anti-virus programs. One cannot go to the recyle bin to get the missing data back.
At 5:00 p.m. on Jan 24, more than 700,000 computers had already been infected by the worm, according to a stats counter used by the worm author. Finnish anti-virus vendor F-Secure, said the worm accounts for more than 17 percent of all virus infections in the last 24 hours.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that anti-virus vendors are all using different names to identify the worm. In addition to Blackworm, the worm has been named Kama Sutra, Blackmal, MyWife and Nyxem.
Please doublecheck your anti-virus software to make sure it is working and that its definitions are up-to-date. And, of course, don't open any attachments you are not sure of.
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