Kama Sutra Worm Time-Bomb Set for Feb. 3

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

This is such an old-school worm … not only is it written in Visual Basic, you have to open the attached file to infect your PC. Yet people still have not learned not to open files they’re not expecting.

The worm is also known as Nyxem, but was dubbed the Kama Sutra worm because although it can have a variety of subject lines and text, they are generally sexual in nature and can include references to the Kama Sutra, the ancient book about sexual positions.

The worm actually has a site which keeps count of the number of infections and according to F-Secure, that site showed 510,000 infections on Saturday, as well as being the most commonly caught virus in the last 24 hours (at the time of this writing, 16.1% and #1 ranking).

Besides setting itself to run at reboot the worm also tries to disable antivirus software and (of course) tries to propagate itself via email.

We Say: The worst thing about Nyxem is that on the 3rd of every month it is set to delete certain files, including Office files. This threat requires human interaction so once again we have to say: stop opening those attachments! How many times do people have to be told?