…and hope you’ve not caught the Nyxem virus which is supposed to hit today, February 3rd. Via BBC… Computer security firms are bracing themselves as the moment approaches when the Nyxem virus will strike. On 3 February the bug will start erasing Word documents, spreadsheets and other common files on infected PCs. Compromised machines will also be used as launch platforms to help the virus seek out fresh victims. Because the virus is known to be lurking on more than 300,000 PCs, this scanning could generate large amounts of net traffic as it activates.

Good thing I wasn’t working three big spreadsheets yesterday which wouldn’t be served well if they were lost to a virus. Actually, been years since I lost anything to a virus, can only remember one occasion – losing Aces Of The Pacific and X-Wing on the PC to some virus I picked up off a PC magazine cover disk…. they laughed it off, damn them! Been a while too since I reported on a virus threat, used to do it on a weekly basis during my final year in college (we had to maintain a security site, so of course I ran a blog 😉 )

Anyway, the infected machine count stands at around 300K and they reckon its more likely to affect home users (since security tends to be a little better in the office). And how do you get duped into it? By opening attachments that claim to have pornographic pictures or videos included. So are we guessing that most computers will belong to males? (Don’t take offence to that, or to generalisation 😉 ).

Dor those of you concerned…. DMP – Oracle files, DOC – Word document, MDB – Microsoft Access, MDE – Microsoft Access/Office, PDF – Adobe Acrobat, PPS – PowerPoint slideshow, PPT – PowerPoint, PSD – Photoshop,RAR – Compressed archive, XLS – Excel spreadsheet, ZIP – Compressed file are the filetypes that are affected. I’m done for if I get it! As would the whole of Waterford IT’s multimedia students…. hope you’re paying attention.