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Safe computing
That
was no tennis player, that was a virus
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By
Michael Dunnn
Fans of
tennis star Anna Kournikova were disappointed on Monday, Feb.
12. A new virus that is spreading around in the form of an
attachment lures people into opening the attachment by fooling
them into thinking that it is a image of the beautiful athlete.
It is named AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs, and the .jpg fools users
into thinking it is an image file.
The .vbs is the true extension, visual basic scripting language.
The virus makes a copy of itself in C:\Windows and embeds
itself into the system's registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\OnTheFly.
The virus will attempt to connect to the site www.dynabyte.nl,
a dDutch computer shopping site. McAfee's and Norton's Anti-viruses
are working on definitions to be downloaded.
The virus hasn't caused any damage to personal computers but
can crash email servers as the Melissa and the Love bug did.
As with both these viruses, it copies itself, and e-mails
everyone in your Microsoft's Outlook address book.
Just because it hasn't caused damage to personal computers
doesn't mean it won't.
If the virus is written to connect to a Web site, then more
than likely it is going to try to update itself by downloading
updates from the Web site. This means it can morph into a
diffent type of virus.
There are a couple of patches for the virus right now. You
can physically remove it yourself. First go to the Windows
directory (C:\Windows) and find annakournakova.jpg.vbs. Delete
it. Now in the same directory open regedit. This is your registry.
You will see HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Open that directory, you will
see Software. Open that, you will see Onthefly. Right click
on it and select delete.
Common sense will stop these viruses. If you see a file with
the extenstion .vbs, .com, or .exe, it is more than likely
a virus, delete it.
Unless you are a programmer, no one is going to send you a
.vbs file, and don't fall for the viruses with two extensions.
If a file has two extensions, then the last one is the true
one
(annakournakova.jpg.vbs), and if it has two extensions it
is most likely a virus.
Michael Dunn wrote about viruses in the February issue
of Dot Com. |
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