| A pesky computer worm snarled hundreds of thousands of PCs worldwide Monday (3rd May 2004) in the latest virus-like outbreak to take advantage of a flaw with the Windows operating system. Because the new worm, dubbed "Sasser," does not require users to click on an e-mail attachment to activate, it spreads more rapidly than most viruses. It was discovered Friday and spread as employees returned to work and booted their machines. The worm caused some computers to repeatedly crash and reboot, apparently the result of bad programming by the virus writer rather than intent, experts said. Sasser does not permanently damage files or machines, they added Microsoft recommended that owners of Windows 2000 and XP computers install patches by visiting windowsupdate.microsoft.com. If you think that you may be infected with this threat, and are unsure how to check your system, you may download the Stinger tool to scan your system and remove the virus if present. |
