Friday is Nyxem day

[Donna D.]

Just a heads up folks.

Nyxem sounds like a new medicine ('Ask your doctor about Nyxem') but it's actually a virus that, on Friday this week, could delete your MS Office documents. We thought our readers should get a 'heads up'.

FRIDAY IS NYXEM DAY
There's a virus out there that will rear its ugly head on Friday. It's known by various names including 'Nyxem' and 'Blackmal' and could delete Office and Acrobat documents from your computer.

On the third of each month, starting this Friday it will destroy Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Acrobat files plus Access databases among others.

If you've followed our long standing suggestions for protection against emailed nasties you should be OK - but since this one could be lurking it's worth a double check - hence this short warning to our readers.

If you have anti-virus software (and if you don't, why not?) then make sure it is up to date then run a full scan over your computers.

Your AV software should have detected any nasties when they first arrived, but some can slip through so regular full scans are a wise move. Running a full AV scan before 'special' events like this is probably more for peace of mind than necessity.

For the same reason, you might want to do a backup of your documents.

The original virus might have arrived as an email message with one of the following subject lines:

Funny
My photos
Crazy illegal sex
Real show
Miss Lebanon 2006
Give me a kiss
School girl fantasies gone bad

Once running on a computer it can infect other computers on the network so even computers that don't have normal email access could be infected.

All the gory details of the virus are at http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blackmal.e@mm.html ://http://securityresponse.symantec.co...kmal.e@mm.html ://http://securityresponse.symantec.co...kmal.e@mm.html ://http://securityresponse.symantec.co...kmal.e@mm.html ://http://securityresponse.symantec.co...kmal.e@mm.html ://http://securityresponse.symantec.co...kmal.e@mm.html and there's also a removal tool if you're already infected.

Several of the anti-virus makers have downloadable demos for you to try.

[Chester Taje]

Our isp warned us yesterday.

[Time K]

There is a removal tool for the W32.Blackmal@mm

-AKA

CME-24, Win32.Blackmal.F [Computer Associates], Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e [F-Secure], Email-Worm.Win32.Nyxem.e [Kaspersky], W32/MyWife.d@MM [McAfee], W32/MyWife.d@MM!M24 [McAfee], Win32/Mywife.E@mm [Microsoft], W32/Small.KI@mm [Norman], Tearec.A [Panda Software], W32/Nyxem-D [Sophos], WORM_GREW.{A, B} [Trend Micro]

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcen...moval.tool.html

[Gina D.]

Man..

I woke up this morning thinking all my work files would be gone.



Now I have no excuse... dang!

[Roger H]

Man..

I woke up this morning thinking all my work files would be gone.



Now I have no excuse... dang!

Gina... press Start... then Run... type in "cmd". You should get a black window with a prompt that says C:\> At the C:\> prompt, type "format c:\" and press enter. If you weren't lucky enough to get the worm/virus through the normal virus/worm transmission means, this process will work just as well to delete all of your files, and you won't have to die of anticipation wondering whether or not you got it!

Have a great weekend!

Roger

[Charlie C]

Roger, that's gettin real scary!!!!

[Chester Taje]

I don't need a virus to mess up my stuff I can do it all by myself