[IrishEyes]

nemo just sent me this link and I wanted to make sure that it got posted here. Basically if you're running Windows (and I know that a few of you still are), make sure - no, i mean REALLY make sure - that your AV software is up to date. This looks pretty nasty.

http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1067

[C1ay]

Would you believe that I don't have any AV software and never have on any of my machines and I've not had one virus? Sure, I've received 100's via email over the years but I've never executed any of them. I've had a hardware firewall for years now and I see nary a worm. I do think I'm the exception though, all other windows users should keep some kind of AV software running. I get a lot of calls from friends to help them clean their box from the latest bug.

[IrishEyes]

This one looks pretty bad. An excerpt from the SANS site (where the link leads) says the following:

About BlackWorm
Over the last week, "Blackworm" infected about 300,000 systems based on analysis of logs from the counter web site used by the worm to track itself. This worm is different and more serious than other worms for a number of reasons. In particular, it will overwrite a user's files on February 3rd.

At this point, the worm will be detected by up to date anti virus signatures. In order to protect yourself from data loss on February 3rd, you should use current (Jan 23rd or later) anti virus signatures. Note, however, that the malware attempts to disable/remove any anti-virus software on the system (and does this every hour while the system is up), so if the machine was infected before signatures were deployed, obviously, that anti-virus software can't be expected to clean up the infection for you.

The following file types will be overwritten by the virus: DOC, XLS, MDE, MDB, PPT, PPS, RAR, PDF, PSD, DMP, ZIP. The files are overwritten with an error message( 'DATA Error [47 0F 94 93 F4 K5]').

It just sounds yucky. I'm glad I'm not subjected to the Evil Empire any longer.

[GAHD]

It's stuff like this that makes me keep backups.

[Drip Curl Magic]

hmmm... I use the free version of AVG and AVG updates itself daily automatically. Is this program enough to protect me? I was told one time that there is a better free anti-virus program- but I forgot the name of it. Anyone know of any really good AV programs (preferably free)?

[Jay-qu]

Avast, AntiVir - I have both running on different machines and havent ever had any problems. Good Adware/spyware/malware software is also helpful, they can do some nasty things to.

[Mercury]

I received an e-mail two days ago which contained a virus... it might be this one. This is very, very bad. It's in several local newspapers and everyone is worried about it.

[alexander]

lol guys, i run viruses in wine to see what they effect on people's computers

well, it took the good news a few days to get here, this was on digg like 2 days ago...

here is some more info on the worm:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com...kmal.e@mm.html