W32.Fatuous


Aliases: N/A
Variants: N/A

Classification: Malware
Category: Computer Virus

Status: Active & Spreading
Spreading: Slow
Geographical info: Asia, North and South America, and some parts of Europe and Australia
Removal: Easy
Platform: W32
Discovered: 17 Oct 2002
Damage: Low

Characteristics: W32.Fatuous is the easiest worm to detect among any others that were written to damage a computer. This affect all Windows Operating System platforms including Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT and Windows XP. The worm then spreads by copying itself with the hidden and system attributes set to a fake Recycled folder. This effect in filling up your computer with garbage, that is, files which are malicious, damaging and are not important in your computer. As it multiplies, it takes up space and this space become unusable while memory space is also lessened. This may render the system inoperable.

More details about W32.Fatuous

This virus sometimes changes the boot sector. could result to the inability of the computer to run. It also duplicates itself as the file "This is the worm.exe" into the root folders of drives C through K. No other malicious or damaging actions are reported by this worm. Other reports also say that this worm spreads through email, IRC, peer to peer file sharing and network drives. Removing this virus from your system poses a lot of risks as you need to browse for Windows system directories because these are the directories this worm usually infiltrates. There may also be several copies of this virus in different locations.

The W32.Fatuous reportedly has a backdoor utility that allows an intruder to remotely access the computer. To carry out this backdoor feature, the Trojan has two essential components, namely, the client program and the server. The client program is responsible for providing the hacker with a user interface that allows the remote access and control over the computer. The server component is a background process that runs on the computer and is primarily responsible for opening a backdoor port for the hacker. This server component is also tasked with listening for any message transmitted from the client and likewise executes the remote instructions given.