This wouldn’t be the first time a file masquerading as something else proceeds to delete all kinds of delicious media off your hard drive.  A new worm is making the rounds, one that will delete all your MP3 files though it doesn’t seem to target anything else.

On average, the typical computer contains around 3GB of MP3 files but around here, it’s a lot more.  The W32.Deletemusic searches your hard drive and deletes any MP3 file it comes across, hence, the name.  It won’t stop with your primary driver either, it will spread to all attached media devices including other hard drives and flash drives.  If it makes it’s way on to a flash drive, it will continue the path of destruction on the next computer the drive is plugged in to.

According to ArsTechnica this has been done before.  The Nopir worm posed crossed our paths two years ago posing as DVD copying software but actually deleted MP3 files and the Erazer trojan deleted just about every media file you can think of and then some.

The W32.Deletemusic virus affects everything from Windows 95 to Vista, talk about your backwards compatibility!  It should be noted that any computer with a half competent real time virus scanner should detect and deal with the threat, Symantec released first response updates on July 30, McAfee responded with updates on August 1.  And, if your antivirus is set to check all media devices before launching then the threat will be dealt with even before it can do any damage.

Symantec rates W32.Deletemusic as a “low risk” as it should be, it seems it’s not spreading very fast or well (which is a good thing).

Related:

Entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 at 2:01 pm under Antivirus, Microsoft, Security.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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