If you're crazy about Harry Potter and you can't wait to see the movie and get a hand on the merchandise, there's something out there that has Harry Potter that you don't want. A new worm has hopped aboard the bandwagon and is annoying users everywhere.

There's still no lead on the origin of the worm and what to do about it. All that's known at this point is that the worm, called W32/Hairy-A, can be transmitted like regular malware and through removable drives.

If a USB drive is inserted to a port on an infected PC, the worm copies itself to the device, then copies itself to a new host PC and does weird and annoying things to your computer.

Symptoms include starting up to find new user accounts in Windows named after the book's characters, a text document that says Harry Potter is dead, a change in your browser's home page, and a greeting that tells you to repent from your sins because the end is near.

According to IT experts, the code does no big harm, but the act of tampering with a system is against the law. They also say that whoever wrote the code is not after financial gain but is just out there to make a statement.

In today's culture where mobile phones also double as PDAs which also double as PCs, hackers have apparently also found a way to extend their reach and infect mobile phones with malware which we originally thought can only be caught on a PC or laptop.

McAfee's Avert Labs has just identified a new kind of malware which is specifically aimed at mobile phones. The owner of the phone receives an SMS message which says something along the lines of "We're confirming you've signed up for our dating service. You will be charged $2/day unless you cancel your order at our Web site". The unsuspecting user, for fear of getting charged, would then click on the link and cause a Trojan to be downloaded into their phone. This Trojan allows hackers to control the handset and use it for malicious activities such as denial of service attacks, installing keylogging software and stealing personal account information. This last bit is to be noted carefully, especially by people who use their mobile phones to access their bank accounts, credit card information, or institutions such as PayPal which has recently offered mobile access for their users.

This phenomenon has been coined as "SMiShing", which is short for "phishing via SMS".

Experts warn to be wary of this kind of activity, and that, should anyone receive a suspicious message, treat it as one would treat a suspicious email: by not clicking on the links provided, not providing any sensitive personal information, and deleting the message as soon as possible.

We know that losing a laptop is more than just losing the money paid for it, or the man-hours of work done on it. It's losing the data inside of it that's the most frightening - worse if the laptop isn't a personally-owned one but a corporate one. Bad enough that the laptop would be sold on the street for a quick buck - worse if any smart criminal (and there are plenty out there) knows that what's inside is worth more than the street value of a hot notebook.

We decided to do a "stolen laptop" search in the QJ site, and the first two stories that popped up (by relevance) were also among the scariest in this regard - because they were big-ticket news events:

• A laptop used by administrators of a day-care program in Rhode Island, containing the sensitive financial (ex: bank account numbers) and personal information (ex: name, address, phone numbers) of around 65,000 of the program's members, stolen from a locked office; and
• Ernst & Young laptops with the employee account information of client companies being stolen, forcing the firm to issue plenty of oops-we're-sorry-themed letters to its clients.

Let's not even mention the stolen Department of Veteran Affairs laptop that contained the records of more than 26 million veterans and their families. Fortunately the laptop was later recovered, and the FBI has determined the integrity of the data inside.

But you want to know what's really scary? Read on at the full article.