New P2P-carried worm

There's a new P2P-carried worm kids and parents need to be on the alert for: Nopir.B. By "P2P-carried," I mean that it's spreading on file-sharing networks and infects Windows PCs when downloaded and run by file-sharers. Why would they do that? It's "designed to look like a DVD-cracking program," tricking file-sharers who are looking for software that circumvents copy-restriction technology on DVDs, ZDNET UK reports. What it really does is delete people's music libraries (all MP3 files on hard drives), as well as some P2P programs (e.g., LimeWire, Grokster, or Kazaa, but ZDNET doesn't say which ones). Sophos, the anti-virus firm that discovered the worm, says it thinks Nopir's creator is on some sort of anti-piracy mission. It's too early to tell how infectious this one will be, but apparently the family PC's safe if your anti-virus software is up to date. For another risk that just came up in tech news again last week, see "P2P's privacy problem."