Posted by Hammerer on 04/01/06 01:01

Bad news on the peer-to-peer front, I'm afraid. A story, covered by dozens
of reputable news-sources, today, talks about how every major P2P
application connected to the net over the next 24-hour period will exhibit
some definitely odd behaviour. It's eye-watering stuff.

A new, heuristic virus (technically, a Java-Osmotic Kinetic Exogram virus)
has been quietly infecting all known P2P clients for the last few days, and
is now about to deliver its payload.

This will take the form of making the infected clients (around 97%, it's
calculated) cancel all ongoing file up/downloads, and begin to up & download
*themselves*, to and from each other.

My analysis of the code, which I've managed to isolate from a range of
experimentally-infected (but inactive) clients, suggests that, upon
activation, a pre-programmed sequence of effects will ensue.

All BitTorrent clients will immediately begin being uploaded to Limewire and
Kazaa apps; WinMX will download Direct Connect ++ clients; Kazaa will
download SoulSeek, WinMX, and all Gnutella derivatives; and Shareaza will
download all known clients except for WinMX, and upload itself to Limewire
and kazaa.

On completion of the alloted instructions, all users will end up with either
their client of choice deleted, or find that they possess a copy of someone
else's client, complete with the share-folders of the unlucky victims.

Obviously, this is serious stuff, so over the next 24 hours it is imperative
to keep a close eye on your client of choice. If you find it exhibiting
strange behaviour, the only thing to do is to keep your finger on the Shift
and F1 buttons for the duration (tip - weigh the keys down with weights to
avoid cramp).

These things happen, but I'm sure we'll all get through this Hell. Good luck
to everybody. Hang on in there.

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