Computer Worm Threatens Major Destruction Friday

Jan 31, 2006

Friday may be D-day, as in “destruction day,” for millions of Windows computer users.

That’s the day a notably pesky e-mail worm, variously called “Nyxem.E,” “CME-24,” “BlackWorm,” “Mywife.E,” “KamaSutra” and “VB.bi,” among other names, is set to detonate its deadly payload.

Once activated, the worm will corrupt all documents on a infected machine with the following file extensions: .dmp, .doc, .mdb, .mde, .pdf, .psd, .ppt, .pps, .rar, .xls and .zip.

That means almost all files created using Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft PowerPoint could be lost forever, as well as “raw” Adobe Photoshop files, PDF files used by Adobe Acrobat and competing PDF readers, and several kinds of database and compression files.
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