No hoax; I've seen this one in action. For simple people, it hammers Plug and Play.
Standard op for your computers:
- For God's sake, don't open any attachments.
- Don't run any P2P programs (Limewire, BitTorrent, Kazzaa)
- Running Outlook? Shut it down for awhile.
- Don't be on your computer on an account with admin rights; Power User rights should do it. If you're running admin rights, that means that if someone remotely attacks your computer, they have full rights.