Being Mac users, we usually aren't affected by viruses, so we tend to be a little slow to realize that a new one has shown up to say howdy. Eventually you learn to read the signs, though; judging by the general sluggishness we're noticing around the 'net and the occasional IT person running pell-mell down the street with his hair on fire, we can only assume that yet another virus-thingy has the Wintel world by the virtual throat. Sure enough, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the latest in a long line of NaughtyWare to disturb the peace is known as "Blaster," which apparently showed up on Monday and continues to spread more quickly than terminal boredom at a "Documentaries About Chalk and Excise Tax" film festival. CERT claims that 1.4 million individual IP addresses had been infected by yesterday afternoon.

Now, we pretty much always chuckle a little when something like this sends Wintel networks into a tizzy, but this time the Giggle Quotient's just about off the meter. Perhaps you recall how, the day after Microsoft scored a $90 million contract to provide software for 140,000 computers at the Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft announced that most versions of Windows included a little security oopsie that kindasorta lets cybermeanies "seize control of a victim's Windows computer over the Internet, stealing data, deleting files, or eavesdropping on emails." And maybe you recall just a couple of weeks ago when the same Department of Homeland Security (yes, the one that shelled out $90 mil for a pile of software so insecure it's frequently mistaken for Woody Allen's more neurotic younger brother) saw fit to issue "an unprecedented second warning" about this particular security abyss, practically begging all Windows-using Americans to patch their Wintels posthaste.

Gee, guess which vulnerability Blaster exploits? So that should give you a sense of how seriously the average Wintel user takes the necessity of patching Windows's many holes, even when the government gets involved.

Interestingly enough, Blaster has an air of tech commentary about it that most viruses sadly lack; it appears to exist primarily to chastise Microsoft for making Blaster's existence possible in the first place. The worm's code includes this message: "Billy Gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software." On top of that, this Saturday all infected computers will reportedly participate in a massive distributed denial of service attack by firing off zillions of requests to WindowsUpdate.com, Microsoft's site for issuing all those hundreds of security patches that evidently no one ever downloads. (Well, at least the site will get some traffic for once.)

As usual, Macs themselves can't be infected by Blaster, but Macs Only! reports that Mac networks can experience problems even if there's only a single infected Wintel somewhere on the LAN. They suggest that the solution is to "take the Wintel offline, apply the Microsoft Windows patch, and use a worm removal tool." We here at AtAT would amend that slightly in order to prevent a similar problem in the future:

1. Take the Wintel offline;
2. Throw it off the nearest bridge;
3. There's no step three.