Kama Sutra Trojan a Dud — Repercussions to Follow?

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

The Kama Sutra trojan, AKA MyWife, Nyxem, Blackmal and Grew, was scheduled to overwrite and corrupt files on infected PCs yesterday, as we earlier reported. However, the word got out and there were almost no reports of damage. That’s a good thing, right?

Yes, and no. According to some antivirus vendors, such as Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro, the world’s top three antivirus software makers, Nyxem was never a large threat. All three never raised their alert above “low” or “medium.” However, other security firms put out high infection numbers that hyped the threat. In fact, F-Secure displayed a map on its site on Thursday which would seem to indicate a worldwide threat (there’s also a counter on that page which at the time of this writing showed 400,000 PCs infected).

Some are worried that the fizzle that was Nyxem will lead to complacency in the future. Users may think that all such alerts are hype and decide they have nothing to worry about. Others discount this theory.

We Say: Yes, this was a non-event. The fact that PCs were even infected at all, since you had to open an attachment (and we say it again, haven’t people learned yet?) shows that people are still too careless. Rather than becoming complacent, I hope that people can learn from this and realize that with alerts and taking action (or in this case, avoiding attachments), threats like this can be averted.

On the other hand, although the major Nyxem threat has come and gone, let’s not forget that it is set to corrupt files on the 3rd of every month. So let’s be careful out there on the ‘net.