London - Thousands of office printers around the world have been spewing out page after page of gibberish after being hit with a computer virus.
As several companies complained that thousands of pages of paper were wasted when the Windows virus hit their computers, security firms said the worst hit were large businesses in the US, India, Europe, and South America.
According to the BBC, the virus is learnt to be a malicious program called Milicenso, which has been re-used many times by hi-tech crime groups.
Security firm Symantec, in a blogpost analysing the virus, claimed that Milicenso was first seen in 2010 and because it was a "malware delivery vehicle for hire" had turned up regularly ever since, while its most recent incarnation was as a tool for distributing French language adware.
Symantec said one side effect of infection was to generate a file in a PC's printer queue, which turns the contents of the files in the virus's main directory into print jobs.
"The garbled printouts appear to be a side effect of the infection vector rather an intentional goal of the author," said Symantec.
Security firms have now issued updates that should spot Milicenso and clean up any infections.
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