Watch Out For The Worm

A vicious worm - the My Wife/Kama Sutra/Blackworm - is getting set to rear its ugly head this Friday the 3rd when it will arrive on unprotected PCs and destroy Microsoft Office files. Though experts have been sounding alarms for a couple of weeks about the malware which infects PCs once unsuspecting users open an email attachment and Microsoft issued a security warning on the Worm earlier this week, Microsoft will not issue a fix in advance of the company's next scheduled malicious software removal tool.Whether the worm sweeps through enterprises or makes only a small dent in a few, this one stands out for its destructive nature. The worm, which overwrites files, runs counter to the recent trend of malicious software which aims to take control of a computers to steal information and turn a profit.

So, as the clock ticks down to the 3rd, this is prime time for system administrators to make sure your organization's anti-virus software is up-to-date. And given that the worm-of-many-names is transmitted as an email attachment, it is also another chance to remind end users not to open e-mail attachments from an unknown source.