Kama Sutra worm hits India, Peru hardest

The worm set to overwrite important Microsoft and Adobe documents has struck India five times harder than the US, and Peru three times harder, reports Information Week.

Chicago-based security company LURHQ has claimed that the worm, dubbed Kama Sutra or Blackworm or nearly two dozen other names, has infected nearly 80 000 PCs in India. Peru has almost 55 000 compromised computers.

In comparison, the US has about 15 000 machines contaminated with the worm. LURHQ tagged the total number of Blackworm-infected computers at around 300 000, even though a Web-based infection counter claims a number in the millions.

With a D-Day of 3 February fast approaching, Microsoft`s anti-malware engineering team is beating the drum for PC users to update anti-virus signatures and be on high alert for suspicious e-mail attachments.

They are warning computer users to be on high alert for the Kama Sutra or Blackworm e-mail worm that uses social engineering tactics to deliver a destructive payload, reports eWeek.

The company issued an official security advisory to back up a warning from its anti-malware researchers that the Kama Sutra worm is programmed to permanently corrupt a number of common document format files on the third day of every month.

Finnish anti-virus vendor F-Secure has released a free disinfection tool to help clean compromised computers before the deadline on Friday.

Japan`s Sony, Toshiba and NEC have agreed to co-develop microchips with a circuitry width of 45 nanometres, reports Reuters.

The move was expected as NEC Electronics had said last week an official agreement between the three was likely.