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By:
Jacques Dady Jean
CEO Town Computer Advanced Technical Services
“Although
Microsoft posted a security advisory warning the world
about the Kama sutra/Blackmail/Mywife , they will not
issue a removal tool until February 14 almost 2 weeks
after the malicious software began to make victims,
meanwhile their anti-virus security partners were busy
promoting their
latest anti-virus and internet security software.”
As
the CEO of Town Computer, a Massachusetts-based national
computer repair center and network security consulting
firm, I put in place a rapid response team to deal with
the possible dilemma that may be caused by the Kama
Sutra also known as Nyxem, Blackmail or mywife.
Contrarily to the propaganda orchestrated by Microsoft
and its affiliates aimed at downplaying the severity of
the epidemic, the Kama Sutra has already triggered
extensive damage destroying important computer data all
over the world. Last
week alone, we recorded in our shops 163 PCs and laptops
infected by the worm nationwide and we served nearly 200
other customers by phone and through our website, who
alleged that their PC was infected by the worm. Although
this number sounds small, it is alarming. The cost of
disaster recovery for data overwritten by Kama Sutra
ranges between $2500 and $3000, many small businesses
has hard time covering such unexpected expenses.
From
experience, only Microsoft products are always attacked
by these malicious software, users of Sun Microsystems
and MAC products have never been exposed to any threat.
Microsoft’s
claim that the Kama Sutra threats were overblown by the
media is not correct, as well as the highly publicized
estimate made by CAIDA (Cooperative Association For
Internet Data Analysis) stating that only between
469,000 and 947000 computers worldwide are affected by
Kama Sutra. It is almost impossible to track and measure
the spreading of an email virus. In fact, they have not
specified how they even get these numbers. There are
thousands of small computer repair centers and geeks
providing convenient computer and network services and
so far there is no formal or informal, private or public
institution to report revealing computer issues that
maybe of national interest.
As
we all know the computer industry is not regulated, it
is not like the health care industry where the medical
community is required to report certain cases of
infectious diseases to their local CDC.
Microsoft
is downplaying the catastrophic effect of the malware
because their anti-malware team had plenty of time to
act on the threat and prevent the virus from causing any
damage to their customers. Although Microsoft posted a
security advisory warning to the world about the Kama
Sutra/ Blackmail/ Mywife, they will not issue a removal
tool until February 14 almost 2 weeks after the
malicious software began to make victims, meanwhile
their anti-virus security partners were busy promoting
their latest anti-virus and internet security software.
As
much as we know, the Kama Sutra is a small V-basic
executable file, less than 100 Kb, it also
contained a malicious payload designed to overwrite
files with certain extensions on the 3rd of every month.
Affected file types include: .doc, .xls, .mdb, .mde, .ppt,
.pps, .zip, .rar, .pdf, .psd, and .dmp. If you have not
been infected this month, the possibility of
getting infected is still high.
Computers
infected with Nyxem automatically breed a unique http
request for the URL of an online statistics page
allowing the publisher to track the progress of the
worm.
The
kama sutra is a real threat, the size of this malicious
file and its propagation method making it easy to spread
quick. Be aware that the Kama sutra maybe modified and
reappear in different and more advanced forms.
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