I told you it's better to keep your Windows up-to-date with the latest fixes because you can avoid several problems but this time, it's pretty necessary to do so. Security vendor Trend Micro released a notification concerning WORM_JALOUS.AI, a new threat targeting the Windows computers and especially the vulnerabilities found in the Microsoft operating system. The security company confirmed the infection targets Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Server 2003 and rated the damage potential as medium. It seems that the worm can be downloaded by a user without his approval while visiting a dangerous website.

"Upon execution, this worm drops several files, which Trend Micro detects as WORM_JALOUS.AI and WORM_DLOADER.SZW. The said dropped files may be injected into certain running processes. This worm then creates a registry entry to enable its automatic execution at every system startup," Trend Micro wrote in the advisory.

The worm attempts to exploit the Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-040 vulnerability, obviously on the unpatched systems. Microsoft urged the customers to download and install this patch as it is considered critical, affecting several Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1.

Trend Micro revealed that WORM_JALOUS.AI already infected a number of computers, many of them belonging to Asians, according to the security company, approximately 30 infected systems being located in China.

Sure, the worm has only a low overall risk rating, but it's always very important to keep your operating system up to date with the latest patches and fixes released by the developers. This is just an example of what might happen if your computer is vulnerable to attacks due to some Windows security holes.