Although the much-feared Kama Sutra worm activated in SA last week Friday, it caused little damage locally, say anti-virus vendors.
Discovered on 16 January, the worm was designed to destroy common files such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
Although there are no "specific or quantifiable reports at this stage, it appears a high number of local PC users had sufficient time to take necessary steps to prevent the disaster," says Justin Stanford, CEO of Eset Southern Africa.
"The large amount of the time prior to the activation date, and significant media coverage created sufficient awareness for many people to ensure they were not infected," says Stanford.
"Our own support department had no issues regarding this worm since the 3 February D-Day," agrees Brett Myroff, CEO of local Sophos distributor Netxactics, saying he has seen very little impact locally.
The current volume counts on VirusRadar.com seem to back this up, and although the worm is still spreading, it is in decline, Stanford says.
Commenting on global infections, Stanford says while there are no hard statistics, the City of Milan in Italy discovered its entire network of 10 000 computers was infected.
"The City of Milan did not have sufficient time before the activation date to fully disinfect, so they elected to simply shut down completely for the duration of the 3rd. They were able to start up as normal the next day and continue without any problems," he says.
"Most anti-virus vendors released signature updates in January for this particular virus, so the companies and for that matter home users that ensure that their anti-virus software and OS patches are updated would have been protected well in advance," Myroff says.
Related stories:
Today is Kama Sutra D-Day
Kama Sutra worm to hit next week
Share
