newbie, in new york city, seeks to become reasonably proficient in the security arena

I recently came across this while wading through ms's
instruction/explanation notes:

=================================================================

Win32/Alcan creates a hidden folder for itself under the "Program Files"
folder and copies itself there. It will set a registry key to make itself
run on startup out of this folder. This hidden folder will have a name like
"winupdates" or "msconfigs".

It will share itself out via P2P networks using filenames it gathered from
various websites.

When run, it attempts to disable a number of system tools by creating files
matching their filename but with a ".com" extension instead of a ".exe"
extension. When run from the Run window or a command prompt without
explicitly specifying the extension, Windows will report the error "The
NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction". The tools affected by
this are: cmd, netstat, ping, regedit, taskkill, tasklist, and tracert.
Additionally, taskmgr is opened and locked by Win32/Alcan so that it may not
be run. Attempts to run it will cause Windows to give the error "Another
program is currently using this file".

Some versions of Win32/Alcan will install other malicious software, such as
Win32/Rbot, onto your computer.
====================================================================

can someone translate this into English? what can I read to assist me in my
travails?

is there a group in new york city with whom I can vis-a-vis?

thanks.

--


/s/ Neal Weissman
(212) 591-1531