At least half a million computers are infected with Nyxem.D virus

This Internet worm of pornography did not cause " data destruction " as predicted, but security experts estimate it also penetrated between 469,507 and 946,835 PCs between January 15 until 1/2/2006.

Internet data analysis organization CAIDA said that, in the (at least) number of hacked computers, most were concentrated in India (32.2%), followed by Peru (18.7%). , Italy (8.1%), Turkey (6%) and the US (5.6%).

Nyxem rarely occurs in South America and the Middle East. CAIDA experts also said that South America was attacked 4 days later than other regions may be because its author released a separate version in Spanish.

While the risk of destroying Nyxem.D's document on the computer was blown across newspaper pages both in and outside the technology field, CAIDA claimed that the program was in fact nothing special. According to the organization's estimates, the total number of Nyxem victim computers is less than that of other e-mail viruses. CAIDA said there were very few user announcements about data loss, but they also noted that it was difficult to comprehensively assess the extent of the damage.

Security experts recommend that network users should not be happy to have won Nyxem because scanning and destroying it on personal and business systems will cost a significant amount.

Nyxem.D is a virus designed to overwrite content on Word and Excel document files on infected computers on the 3rd day of the month, starting last Friday. The virus spread via e-mail with a ' decoy ' message as pornographic images. Nyxem.D will continue to rage and the next outbreak will be March 3.