Found this at another forum and decided to pass it along.



This is kinda like a weather forecast. Very soon there will be a new Windows virus that will infect your computer simply by viewing an image.

Got your attention? Good.

The bug that' s going to allow this virus to happen is in the GDI+ library file...GDI+, as you may or may not know is the way that most nice 2D graphics happen on Windows. Every played with something that made windows transparent?...That' s GDI+...Many, many programs use GDI+ for all kinds of stuff...However, there' s a bug that could allow a virus to infect your computer in a JPEG file.

This problem effects Windows XP, Office XP/2003 and various other programs like Picture It...Basically, this is a huge problem.

Here' s MS' s page on the matter: http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/200409_jpeg.mspx

The fix for Windows XP is to install Service Pack 2. Note that if you have Office XP or Office 2003 installed, you have to update those sperately from Windows at the Office Update site. All the links can be found at that Microsoft page above.

Time is of of the essence here. Demo programs have already been made that use this flaw...There could only be a matter of days until we see a major virus spreading.