X

MyWife worm could destroy your Office files

MyWife worm could destroy your Office files

Robert Vamosi Former Editor
As CNET's former resident security expert, Robert Vamosi has been interviewed on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets to share his knowledge about the latest online threats and to offer advice on personal and corporate security.
Robert Vamosi
There's a new mass-mailing e-mail worm on the loose that uses an old trick--the lure of pornography. Known as MyWife (www.mywife@mm), and also known as CME-24, Nyxem by F-Secure and Sophos, Blackmal by Symantec, or Worm_Grew by Trend Micro, this new worm pretends to offer salacious photographs when you open the attached file. Unfortunately, some of the variants of this worm will lie in wait until the third day of the month and will then destroy files with the following extensions, DOC, XLS, MDB, MDE, PPT, PPS, ZIP, RAR, PDF, PSD, and DMP. MyWife has been active in Europe and South America, but so far it hasn't become very widespread. See McAfee for more details.