There is a patch available from uStuff to defeat it. Fortunately I live behind a firewall with all but the necessary ports blocked off which will make it hard for anything to get in.
But you are right, this is a nasty one. I believe it can also run as a script and can therefore infect any machine. An associate believes it has taken out his Mac as well.

He's far from computer literate so this could be a furfie but if it's not then it's a pretty potent attack.

Hay, Grazie...here I have been worried about you and the heat over there!

They say the Worm is in the newest versions of XP. My sister got the worm with her newer Dell and a cable modem. She has a recovery disk that has XP with SP1 on it, so I'm assuming that that is the version of XP that is effected..?? I'm not sure, though.

I hope you can upgrade to XP soon, and I won't remind you what a former dark sider said about WinMe....(the only virus his computer had was ME)....Ooops....

Hay, stay cool over there, and then send some power to our east coast, so they can get cool!

Jon (Minnesota)..:)

-

Grazie - you've got lucky! ME isn't affected, it's just (just!!) the MS OSs based on NT i.e. NT, XP, 2000 and Server 2003 that are vulnerable. BTW, people shouldn't be complacent because they're behind a company firewall - I've seen people connect their laptops to the net at home, get infected, then bring them into work and connect them to the LAN.

Cheers

Ian G.

I guess everyone has the official newsletter from uStuff, if you're on their mailing list you should have it. If not I could probably work out how to post it here.

IanG,
you're dead right about relying on corporate f/walls, luckily I'm not in the corporate world any more.

Everyone is overreacting about the worm. I got it, Mcafee deleted it, then I patched my computer. If I had autoupdate enabled on my win2k computer (which i don't like) then microsoft would of patched the hole last month, when it was discovered. Mcafee (www.mcafee.com) has a free cleaner for the worm. It also links to the microsoft patch.

All the virus does is annoy you really. It disable the copy/past ability of Wondows, IE doesn't work properly, any web based folder listings on your computer don't display properly (if you disable viewing the folders as web pages, the problem here is fixed). I didn't loose any of my Vegas stuff from it. :)

Ah...

A worm isn't a virus.

The one talked about only effects SOME versions of Windows.

This particular worm isn't nasty, more a nussiance. It does NOT overwrite or destory any files or trash your hard drive. It can and does proprogate itself, which it what worms like to do.

Another reason to accept the critical updates as Microsoft offers them. Which is always after the fact, but the vast majorty aren't effected immediately if at all.

It does not and can not effect Mac's. Windows is almost always the target because it by far is the most popular OS and some people don't like Billy G. Example this worm has a message burried in the code that said "Billy why don't you fix what's broken".

From the horse's mouth:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp

Stiffler,

The worm is not "in" WinXP or related versions (ie, its not built-in). These systems have the vulernability to the worm. Go to Symantec.com for all the details.

G

Hiyah Stiffy! - Well the temperature has now returned to our "normal" August values. Actually, the weather is rather Top Hole - Don't yer know? Been out filming a Garden Centre all day. Beautiful blue skies. Fab flowers and the balmy breeze was gently stirring the willows trees. - Stiffy - "and I won't remind you what a former dark sider said about WinMe" - how yes!!! Seems like an Ion ago, all that angst - yeah?

Ian - good to hear from you! So WinMisEry is good for something then!

Take care people, you are my friends - I don't want you to dissappear up your own TCP [ is that the correct thingy? ]

Grazie

Glad to hear you made it through the heat wave. Did you drink lots of ice tea?