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http://news.com.com/2100-1001-918132.html?legacy=cnet&tag=lthd

Here's removal instructions from McAfee:

http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=99495

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Colin Wiseley
Lyric Theatre
Blacksburg, VA
www.thelyric.com

Having said that, it's worth pointing out that firewalls are, by themselves, not a panacea for security threats. For most individual users, "get a firewall" is really lousy advice, since it tends to result in a false sense of security for novice users who have just managed to install the latest windows-based firewall software on their PC, without really understanding what it does.

A much better approach would be to configure the operating system properly in the first place, which makes firewalls unnecessary. Turn off all public services (mail and web servics, Windows file sharing, NFS/portmap, etc.) except those whose risk is determined to be justified.

Firewalls are useful in large organizations (companies, etc.) where there are large numbers of machines and the risk that one might be misconfigured is high. The concept of a firewall is not supposed to be a primary defense, but rather an added security measure to protect against accidental misconfiguration. For individual users with one or two computers, I'd strongly suggest spending the time to configure them properly in the first place instead of trying to protect a wide-open OS install with something that may or may not do any good.

They also can prevent an app from accessing TCP/IP (or any net protocol). This is very useful for tracking down trojans and/or spyware. Not all malware is obvious, like Kazaa. For instance, a friend of my wife put a free Barbie game she got from a box of cereal on her computer for her daughter. Turns out, it had spyware attached, and would regularly "phone home" with whatever info it had compiled. The firewall I installed on her machine when she got cable caught the executable in the act, and I was able to remove it.

With more and more average joes getting high speed, constant connections to their home computers, as well as setting up home LANs, it gets harder and harder to educate people. How many people who have setup (or had a friend or family member setup) a home LAN know it is a really bad idea to bind TCP/IP to windows services? Not many. In fact, this is one of the most common flaw in home LANs today.

www.boingboing.net has posted this info about the virus and its authors:

The Benjamin Worm, virus that's sweeping the Kazaa file-sharing network, is a supposed "white hat" worm that was developed to scare people away from making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works on P2P networks.

According to one of its developers, Paul Komoszki, Benjamin is a "controlled test" of a program designed to disrupt the illegal exchange of copyrighted data and child porn over peer-to-peer networks.
"We do not want to affect the exchange of legal programs and legal music files. Only users who are looking for and sharing copyrighted files could be infected," said Komoszki in an e-mail interview today.

Once it infects a Kazaa user's computer, Benjamin creates numerous copies of itself under file names that may be of interest to other Kazaa users, according to anti-virus firms. Examples include borlanddelphi-full-downloader.exe and Braveheart-Special Edition-divx.exe, according to Kaspersky Labs.

Pardon my French, but what a flaming self-rightous scumbag idiot! I hope someone sues the pants off him, and he is placed pantless in front of people his worm has infected. Does he think that because one user of a computer does something he doesn't like, ALL the users of that computer should be punished? This isn't a one person/one computer world. Besides, who the f... does he think he is making such decisions outside of the legal system? White hat worm, bullshit. I can see his little worm infecting unintended targets very easily and causing serious damage. This guys is a man with too many tools and too few brains. Even though I don't file share, and I never have, I have nothing but contempt for this loser.