The computer virus was first theorised in 1949; 63 years later and you'd think we'd have seen it all, however it appears that the creativity of coders with idle hands knows no bounds, as the latest virus to rear its head in the news, known as 'Print Bomb' AKA Trojan.Milicenso, causes Windows PCs to quite literally spew garbage.
Infection can occur either through opening an e-mail attachment or by visiting a compromised website running malicious script. The virus is most typically seen as a payload of Adware.Eorezo and other software that specialises in infection, however delivers various other viruses to the infected computer.
The virus installs a '.spl' file in the default spool directory, however this file actually contains executable code which will cause PCs to endlessly print any jobs that wind up in the spool directory. The actual prints are generally garbled and provide a sure sign of infection, which, according Symantex, is likely an unintentional bug in the virus, which should originally have offered greater confusion by printing endless copies of actual, submitted print jobs.
We can't help but wonder if the creator of Print Bomb has some kind of eco or anti-eco agenda; are they attempting to wake firms up to the wastefulness of paper printing? Or are they simply on a rampage to kill as many trees as possible? Perhaps we'll never know.
