The Security Mentor

The latest piece of nastiness is yet another password-protected attachment. It may show up in any of several forms. That link unfortunately starts with technical material and postpones the information for end users. Skip to the bottom: it tells you what to look for.

This one is spreading fast and hard, and caused a Google outage because it looks there for email addresses to victimize, and created so much traffic that even Google couldn't keep up.

Tiptoe around your company's IT people for the next few days. They're probably hitting the ceiling in frustration at all the people who are spreading this infection, in spite of zillions of warnings. You can avoid this one with just regular common sense. The old saying "Fool me twice, shame on me" tells you what to do when something comes in that looks exactly like a virus from last January. By now the IT staff probably believe that all "users" are morons sent to torment them for sins in a past life. Now is not a good time to ask for a favor.

Do update your antivirus software and don't open anything it warns you about. For Pete's sake don't turn off the antivirus software so you can open a file.