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o begin with ensure that you do not unsuspectingly fall prey to the devil in the garb of a Cupid by opening any unsolicited e-mail. Survey by anti-virus vendor MessageLabs in the United Kingdom revealed that more than one-third of al business users would still use a suicidal e-mail on February 14 infested by the worm, merely out of curiosity, despite being aware of the threat. The survey showed that 54 per cent of the persons opened e-mail with "Great joke" as the subject, while 50 per cent fell for e-mails with subject "Look at this". "Re:Message", "Special Offer" and a blank subject line were the other e-mails that found a large number of people responding to them. Virus writers are viewing the Valentine’s Day as a brilliant opportunity to strike. Despite a warning, many computer users fall prey to the viruses and worms merely out of curiosity. It is strongly advised that readers install upgraded anti-virus programs like Anti -Viral Toolkit Pro (AVP), Inoculate, McAfee or even Norton 2001 anti-virus. Inoculate can be downloaded free of cost from www.antivirus.cai.com, being a shareware. Trial versions of AVP (www.avp.com and www.avx.com), McAfee (www.mcafee.com) and Norton (www.symantec.com) can be downloaded from their respective sites. It may however be kept in mind that these are large programs and may take several hours to download. To save the Net time, it is perhaps a better idea to install these anti-virus programs from CD that come free with computer magazines and upgrade the program with the latest releases from the company’s Web site. Upgrades are also available on sites like www.tucows.com in the security section. Before preparing yourself for protection against attacks from computer viruses you must understand how the viruses attack. The most primitive way of virus infection was sharing of infected data between two computers. Floppies, games, adult sites, proved to be the most notorious in this regard. The next generation of viruses were transmitted through e-mail and when an unsuspecting receiver opened the e-mail, it would infect several files, which in turn would multiply and infect several other files when used. The latest generation of viruses is the Davinia, which is a kind of a hybrid worm that has recently shown up in Europe. This virus program exploits the shortcomings in MS Outlook e-mail program. The program uses two steps in entering the selected computer. In the first step, an infected e-mail is delivered to the target computer with a script program that automatically opens an additional Internet Explorer window after a message is read and initiates a connection to the hacker’s Web site. The virus contains another script that opens a Word document in the same site. This document contains a macro-virus that automatically switches off the MS Word anti-virus protection. Then the virus gains access to the MS Outlook and reads out all e-mail addresses in the address book and later sends e-mails to all addresses giving out the link of the hacker’s Web site. Eventually all files on the hard disk are ruined. Microsoft has come out with a security patch that is available on the company’s home page. Virus writers have also developed another virus programme known as E-Bayla lately. This virus is simply a Java script code that manages to send the username and passwords of people on the Net to those running auctions sites. Since there are not much e-commerce transactions on the Net in India yet, this virus does not bother many. Do not let the Valentine Day ruin your
happiness, install the latest anti-virus programme or simply delete the
e-mails that lure you with the Cupid’s arrow.
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