Mail & Guardian reporter
Once you were taught not to take sweets from strangers. A variant of this, which should be drummed into every person with access to the Internet, is not to open e-mail attachments from strangers.
In fact, if possible, don’t open e-mail attachments at all unless you’re expecting them.
The latest nasty to wriggle its way into cyberspace is the Worm.Explore Zip virus. Known aliases include the Troj_Explore.Zip and I-Worm.Zipped.
Although not travelling as fast as the infamous Melissa virus, the Worm is nastier – it wreaks havoc on your hard drive, servers and anything else it can get to.
It attacks and deletes a range of files, including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
The virus spreads by sending itself as a reply to incoming e-mails.
If you send an e-mail to an infected machine you’ll get a reply, with the following text:
“Hi, !
“I received your e-mail and I shall send you a reply ASAP. Till then, take a look at the attached zip docs. Bye. Sincerely .”
Delete the message, then clear out your delete folder.
The threat of the latest Worm virus is so serious that several major companies, including Microsoft and Boeing, reportedly shut down their e-mail systems recently while they constructed protections against the bug, and the mutations expected to follow.
While you actually have to open the attachment to activate the virus, Michael Wright, MD of The E-mail Corporation, believes that in the future merely opening an e-mail will result in infection.
The Worm virus shows again that having anti- viral software is not enough. You have to update it regularly to protect against new forms of e-mail virus. Many software companies have Internet sites where you can download the latest anti-viral protection.