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Protect Yourself from Email Viruses!

You turn on your computer at work or home to see if you have any new email. First, you delete all the emails that include offers of low interest rates on loans, people with large sums of money who need assistance, and products that offer assorted modifications to your anatomy. Now you discover a few messages with "odd" subject lines and/or attachments. Some of them are from people you know, others are from people you don't know. Chances are, this means another email virus or worm is making its way around the world and just landed in your "In Box".

Hopefully by now you have paid attention to all the warnings from your Information Technology/Information Systems Department at work and have virus protection software running on your computer. Make sure you also have the same protection at home!

And just because you have virus protection software, that doesn't mean your work is done. You need to update the software on a regular basis to add "fixes" for newly discovered viruses. Use virus protection software that automatically detects when a newer version is available. This is an easy way to keep your software up-to-date.

Below are some tips, reminders, and some useful information to limit the impact of these nasty intruders.

Definitions

• A virus is code written with the intention to replicate itself. It attempts to spread from computer to computer by attaching itself to a host program. It may damage hardware, software, or data.
  
  
• An email virus usually replicates by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in a victim's email address book.
  
  
• A worm is a subclass of a virus. A worm uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A worm can exhaust memory, network bandwidth, causing a computer to stop responding.
  
  
• A virus that appears to be a useful program, but actually causes damage, is a Trojan horse. For example, something that appears to be a computer game could really be a Trojan horse and destroy the data on your disk drive.

Attachments

• You already learned that you shouldn't open attachments from people you don't know. But be careful. Since many email viruses replicate by mailing itself to people in the victim's email address book, pay close attention to email attachments, even from people you know.
  
  
• You probably also know that you need to be careful about attachments with extensions .exe (executable), .bat (batch file), .scr (screensaver), and .vbs (visual basic file). Don't open these attachments unless you know who sent it AND can confirm the contents of the file with the person. You should also be aware that Windows often hides file extensions. Therefore, you need to look carefully at the attachments. For example, picture.jpg (picture) and document.doc (Word document) look innocent enough. However, the files may be named to deceive you—the full name of the files are picture.jpg.exe or document.doc.vbs. (Now these are files with and .exe and .vbs extension.) For additional information, including how to change the default extension display, please refer to: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1131/eng/safe.html
  
  
• Check your email, browser, and operating system at least once a month to determine if there are any updates. Older software versions may have security flaws that allow unauthorized access to your system. Here are some links that may help you find new versions, upgrades, or patches:
  
  

  Windows Update: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

  Netscape Update: http://home.netscape.com/smartupdate

Here are some sites to check out when you get receive a well-intentioned email from a friend, relative, or colleague warning you about a security threat or virus, or passing on some "useful" information discovered by a friend, of a friend, of a friend, etc.

• Computer Virus Resources from the CERT Coordination Center: http://www.cert.org/other_sources/viruses.html
  
  
• The National Cyber Alert System Web site (http://www.us-cert.gov/) from the Department of Homeland Security provides timely information about current and emerging threats and vulnerabilities as well as advice about protecting your computer and networks.
  
  
• Information about computer virus myths, hoaxes, and urban legends: http://www.Vmyths.com
  
  
• The Symantec AV Center provides information on the most recent virus threats, removal tools, and a Virus Encyclopedia. http://www.symantec.com/avcenter
  
  
• Information from Microsoft on Computer Viruses: Description, prevention, and recovery. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=129972
  

Here is to Safe Computing!