Freaking crazy.

Dear Magonians:

The threat presented by this virus real and you should be concerned.

I recommend immediately that, if you are not, you set up either Malware Bytes Pro or Avast free/pro. These are the only two anti-virus programs that are verified to stop the infection at this point.

The biggest key piece of information about this particular virus is that even if you think you are a smart computer user, you can still be infected. DO NOT be a cocky little twit or noone will have sympathy for you. PROTECT YOURSELF.

The virus is currently CHANGING fairly frequently, so attempts to prevent it have been thwarted a few times over. There are multiple variants of it, presumed to be copycats, but it isn't at this point clear.

The best way to be safe so far is to completely prevent any .exe from running in a few select folders. Here is a guide on how to do that. It is important that you know doing this WILL cause some collateral damage - legitimate programs that you use run out of the folders this targets, and they will no longer be able to operate until the rule is removed.

The guide above is also mildly out of date, as it was written for a previous version. New rules you need to implement are:

%localappdata%\*.exe for Vista-8
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\*.exe for XP

Stay safe.

I've been using Avast for several years now. I can testify to it's quality.

And on top of everything Stythe suggested, I would also recommend you keep a backup of all the files you deem important. I make a habit of plugging in an external drive and updating a master back up just in case something catastrophic happens. This being a prime example.