The music industry must get a kick out of this. A virus that seeks out Mp3’s. Could they have had something to do in making it? No, I don’t think so. I could be wrong. Either way I am sure they are enjoying it.
Security experts have discovered a worm that hunts down and deletes Mp3 files on infected PCs.
Security companies say the worm is only low risk, although its unusual payload could give a nasty surprise to an ardent music fan. The motivation of the hackers who created it is unclear.
“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,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for the security vendor Sophos PLC.
“As such, it’s not something we would lose an awful lot of sleep over, but there are some lessons that computer users should learn to minimize the chances of infection,” he said.
The worm spreads via removable flash drives, reminiscent of the way viruses spread via floppy disks decades ago. That may be an attempt by the authors of the worm to bypass e-mail filters and Web gateway filters that block malicious software, Cluley said.
Symantec Corp., which calls the worm W32.Deletemusic, said in an advisory the worm copies itself to all drives on a PC. It also creates and autorun file to start itself whenever a user accesses a drive.
The worm affects PC’s running all versions of Windows, Symantec said.
I don’t think that the music industry is behind this. Does it help them? 100% Yes. I am sure the music industry is thinking this will take care of illegally downloaded music, but it will also harm music download via iTunes, or any other legal music downloading service.