A worm by any other name

Submitted by Rollie Hawk on Wed, 2006-02-01 02:44.

Just when Windows administration was starting to get boring, there's a new worm on the run with more than its share of variations and names. According to a Microsoft security advisory dated January 30, a Mywife variant is in the wild that will be triggered on the third day of each month. That means this Friday could lead to a long weekend for many a technician.

In this case, the worm does not appear to spread via any known Windows flaw. Rather, it spreads through enticing email attachments. Once triggered, this malicious program will corrupt files of several types including some used by Microsoft programs as well as those used by Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, and several compression schemes. This "trigger" is based upon the local system time rather than any external server, so it was easy enough to catch early.

So far, the best and most common advice seems to be having an active and up-to-date virus scanner. F-Secure has already released two removal tools for the most common variants of this worm, VB.bi and Nyxem.E.


( categories: News | Security/Privacy )
Rollie Hawk is a consultant, web publisher, online personality, magazine writer, web developer, network administrator, teacher, husband and father residing in southern Illinois. He graduated in 2002 from Southern Illinois University, earning his BS majoring in math with a minor in chemistry.

Rollie is a certified math teacher with endorsements in chemistry, physics, and physical science and has taught students of all age groups and abilities, ranging from grade school to the university level. In addition to math and science, he has also taught GED, job skills, and alternative high school classes (his personal favorite).

After the birth of his daughter in 2004, Rollie decided to spend more time at home. This meant leaving his teaching position and devoting his working hours exclusively to consulting, web development, and general IT work.