A bit of a warning regarding an MP3 eating worm/virus that is spreading

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070803-average-pc-is-a-smorgasboard-for-a-new-mp3-eating-trojan.html

and if you don't want to click on the link which also has other links,
here is the article.

FYI....I find this site very informative.

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 *** 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.


Michael
(http://michaelschey.blogspot.com/)
.