Did U.S. President Barach Obama greet you when you sat down at your computer this morning?
If you found a picture of the new U.S. president smiling back at you from the lower right-hand corner of your screen, you’ve got the Obama Worm.
But don’t panic. Leading security experts say that’s all the bug does: displays a picture of Obama every Monday morning.
Trend Micro virus analyst Jamz Yaneza told ZDNet.com the bug is a rather primitive one, which can be spread by USB drives or network shares.
Yaneza also pointed out that serious malware programmers do all they can to hide their infectious agents. The last thing they would do would be to advertise the presence of their creations, especially in as brazen a manner as the Obama Worm does.
Security experts agree that the Obama Worm is probably just a prank by a school kid who got his or her hands on a copy of one of the many DIY virus cookbooks available on the darker side of the Web. The fact that the worm was first discovered on computers at an Illinois elementary school seems to support that contention.