Risk: Medium
The worm is spread through opening attachments or file sharing and is so far known as Nyxem-E, Blackmal, Blackworm, MyWife, Tearec and Kama Sutra, amongst others; the CME number will be 'CME-24'.
When the worm infects a PC, it will disable many anti-virus programmes and may even delete them. It will then add itself to the list of auto-start programs in your registry and will use a variety of extensions and file names.
Multiple file types will be overwritten by the Nyxem-E virus - .doc, .xls, .mde, .mdb, .ppt, .pps, .rar, .pdf, .psd, .dmp and .zip. When they are overwritten, the error message will be: "DATA Error [47 0F 94 93 F4 K5]"
One ISP, Easynet, started contacting customers that it thought may be infected with the Nyxem-E virus, a move which indicated that either the virus was considered to be very serious, or that ISPs are starting to share the anti-virus responsibility.
To minimise the risk of being affected, do not open attachments from unfamiliar email addresses, ensure that good backups are made and install updates for all anti-virus programmes.