The worst thing about computer viruses are that they are relentless and every few days, we get to see a new one of them who is bent on wrecking havoc on machines. Now, it has been discovered that a computer virus was able to ruin the work of thousands of office printers around the world recently.

The impact of this computer virus was surprisingly huge in its reach, essentially global. Businesses in India, South America, Europe and U.S. were specifically hit and were the ones who took the most damage because of this virus.

The virus essentially had something to do with the malicious program called Milicenso. Milicenso is not something new since it had already been discovered back in 2010 and is actually a ‘malware delivery vehicle for hire.’

According to Symantec, Milicenso is capable of infecting a machine through a number of different ways. It can do so by acting as an email attachment or land on the target machine through an infected website.

However, one of the side effects of this virus is that once it is installed on the machine, the infected machine’s printer starts rolling out garbled prints. This is not something which is intentioned by the author of this virus, Symantec says, since it would give away the presence of the virus right away. Rather, it is merely a side-effect of the virus.

Source: Symantec

Courtesy: BBC