Help With Viruses
Since it is so difficult to keep up with the current viruses – here are sites to obtain information:
This site is excellent for home users !!!!
http://www.cert.org/homeusers/HomeComputerSecurity/#1
http://antivirus.about.com
Helpful
Things to Know About Viruses
1. In most cases you cannot get a
virus from opening an e-mail (I will not say you will never get a virus). You can get a virus from opening
an e-mail attachment.
2. What is a virus? What is a worm?
A virus can attack your computer in different ways. There are viruses that go into your word documents and can cause problems in your documents. These macro viruses usually come from an infected floppy disk. The disc becomes infected when it is placed in a computer that is infected and then put into your computer. An UPDATED virus protection program will catch these viruses and delete them.
There are viruses that come from e-mail attachments. Different viruses do different things to computers. If you do not open the infected attachment you will not get the virus. You must run an UPDATED virus protection program that will warn you if the attachment is infected and will clean the virus from your computer.
A worm is a virus that reproduces itself by getting into your e-mail and sending
itself out to everyone on your address book! You must open the infected e-mail attachment to get this virus.
Some people think they do not have this virus because their computer acts normal. You will not know you have this virus unless some one lets you know that your computer is sending it out. It will keep sending out e-mail from your address book until you use an UPDATED virus protection program and then run the update to get rid of the virus.
VERY IMPORTANT
This worm will come to you from someone you know!!! It is in their address book and is sending
out e-mail. It will have a subject
line or body of text to trick you into opening the attachment!! DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT!!!!!!
Example: It will say “I was thinking of you when I saw this” or “Here are pictures from my party” or “Can you help me with this” or …..
4. You must have an UPDATED virus protection
program.
This means you must updated your Norton or McAfee program so that it
knows all of the new viruses that have come out. If you have a new virus protection program you can set it to
update itself every time you get on the Internet.
Example: When the “My Party” virus came out I sent an
e-mail to everyone to not open the picture attachment with this e-mail. People
told me they opened the picture but did not get the virus. Even though they had
a virus protection program running they never ran an update. The program did not know the new virus that
had just surfaced that week. So the virus protection program did not tell them
their computer had a virus.
5. A
virus protection program is usually good for one year. Then you must renew it.
Example: People tell me that they have Norton Antivirus
running on their computer and it came with their computer when it was new, 3
years ago. You need to go on-line and purchase a
new subscription every year. Once you have a
valid subscription you will need to update you virus definitions at least once
a week, or setup the anti-virus program to update automatically. If you do not do this, your virus
definitions will become outdated and the anti-virus software will not detect new viruses or
clean them from your computer.
6. Hoax: Usually an email that gets mailed in chain letter fashion describing some devastating highly unlikely type of virus.
Example: There was an e-mail going around telling people to erase a file on their computer to get rid of a virus. Always contact an IASD technology person before you erase a file.
7. I will try to keep this page up-to-date on virus help. There are many different viruses out there – for more information please try these sites.
Norton http://securityresponse.symantec.com/
or
McAfee http://216.49.88.12/anti-virus/
Latest Information Back to Top
The Klez.H
worm
This worm has been
causing problems for people in our district starting on April 25, 2002.
Antivirus developers report that the new worm travels in an email containing
one of the following subjects (it has many more subject these are just a few
examples):
A new website
Introduction on ADSL
Fwd:virus,Japanese lass' sexy pictures
A very new game
NOSHADE CLASS
The body of the
message reads as follows:
This is a new
website. I wish you would like it
It may also
send a message that it is sending you a tool to defeat the malicious virus. DO
NOT FALL FOR THIS MESSAGE!!
Make
sure you are running a virus scan!!
You
can get this virus without opening an attachment – so make sure you are running
a scan!!
Klez.H also takes
advantage of a vulnerability in unpatched versions Microsoft's Internet
Explorer 5.01 or 5.5 which can allow attachments to be automatically executed
simply by reading - or in some cases, previewing, the email message. Outlook
and Outlook Express, and any mail other client that relies upon Internet
Explorer to render HTML email messages are vulnerable to this exploit.
I
RECOMMEND DOING THE FOLLOWING IN OUTLOOK SO THAT YOUR E-MAIL WILL NOT OPEN
AUTOMATICALLY!
It can
also spoof the From address on the email, making it appear the virus is being
sent from a completely innocent and uninfected person. It may say that the e-mail is from someone you
know and it is really not coming from their computer. It has gotten their name from an infected computer’s address
book. For example you may get an infected e-mail from someone in the district.
It did not come from their computer – it came from someone in the district who
has an infected computer and got into their address book.
NORTON
FREE UTILITY TO CLEAN YOUR COMPUTER OF THE VIRUS - go to the Norton site (at the top of this
section) to download the free utility.