[gui-talk] Fwd: Article: Average PC is a smorgasboard for a new MP3-eating trojan

[Steve Pattison]

>From: djc djc at 3wcomputing.com
>To: pc-audio at pc-audio.org
>
>I offer you this article for your education.
>
>Average PC is a smorgasboard for a new MP3-eating trojan
>By
>Jacqui Cheng
>  | Published: August 03, 2007 - 02:05PM CT

>It's no secret that people like to collect music on their PCs, with music
>files taking
>up more and more hard drive space as time goes on. Recent data from
>Comscore says
>that as of April of this year the typical computer in the US contains an
>average
>of 880 MP3 files, taking up roughly 3GB of hard drive space. Compared to
>the average
>number of Word documents (197), PDFs (100), and Excel files (77), music
>files make
>up the single most common type of file found on an average computer by a
>long shot.
>But that very hobby could bite an avid MP3 collector in the butt if a new
>worm makes
>its way into their computers. A newly-uncovered worm called
>W32.Deletemusic
>  does exactly what its name implies—it goes through a PC and deletes all
>MP3 files
>in sight. And that's it. Simultaneously low-threat and highly annoying, the
>worm
>makes its way from computer to computer by spreading itself onto all
>attached drives
>of a given PC, including flash drives and removable media. If that media is
>then
>removed and inserted into another computer, it continues its music-eating
>rampage
>on the new host.
>This isn't the first time such a worm has gone after MP3 files. Nopir-B
>made its
>rounds some two years ago and posed as DVD copying software,
>according
>  to security firm Sophos. When users tried to run it, Nopir-B scolded them
>for participating
>in piracy and proceeded to delete all MP3s from their computers. Similarly,
>last
>year's
>Erazer
>  trojan deleted not only MP3 files, but AVIs, MPEGs, WMVs, and ZIP files as
>well
>in a "crusade" against piracy.
>Of course, these worms don't take into account the fact that many MP3 files
>may not
>be pirated at all—they could be legitimate downloads, ripped from CDs, or
>even recorded
>by users themselves. And while losing an entire music collection that
>you've dedicated
>so much time into ripping, labeling, and organizing can be devastating,
>there is
>no real payload for the worm's efforts. Such foresight isn't exactly the
>forte of
>these trojan-writers, according to Sophos' Graham Cluley. "The authors of
>this worm
>are more likely to be teenage mischief makers than the organized criminal
>gangs we
>typically see authoring financially-motivated malware these days," he
>said
>  in a statement seen by IDG News Service.
>A quick poll among the Ars Technica staff shows that not only do we all
>have a disproportionate
>number of MP3 files compared to the national average, some of us would be
>quite a
>bit more inconvenienced than others if we were to get bitten by the
>W32.Deletemusic
>bug. The number of music files on our computers ranged from the low end of
>1,400
>all the way up to a staggering 35,000, and we're sure that some of our
>readers could
>probably give those numbers a run for their money. And that's why Cluley
>advises
>that users should turn off any autorun functionalities on their computers
>to prevent
>the worm from spreading.
>W32.Deletemusic affects computers running Windows 2000/95/98/Me/NT/Server
>2003/Vista/XP.
>
>
>
>      djc's Jukebox: http://paulmerrell.net:9212 or
>http://paulmerrell.net:9660 Saturday Evenings 9 to midnight Eastern.
>
>      My Journal http://livejournal.com/users/djc1
>
>              email Or Msn: djc at 3wcomputing.com
>
>      I C Q Number Is: 4781694

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
Skype:  steve1963
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com