A new virus is circulating in the form of an eGreetings card.
As Christmas approaches, anti-virus companies are warning of a virus with a seasonal flavor. While the Love Bug preyed on recipients’ amorous desires, victims of Navidad (the Spanish for Christmas) are hoping for nothing more that a little Christmas cheer when they open an attachment that appears to be an eGreetings card. However this attachment is in fact an Internet worm that uses Outlook to spread and when opened, it sends copies to addresses from the user’s inbox.
After a fake error message, a blue eye icon appears on the Windows taskbar. If the hapless user opens it, a dialog box appears saying Nunca presionar este boton (sic) (Never press this button), at which stage the program can be closed by pressing the close window button at the top right. If the user presses the large button however, a message appears saying Lamentablemente cayo en la tentacion y perdio su computadora (sic) (Unfortunately you fell into the temptation and lost your computer).
The virus, discovered at the start of November, originated somewhere in Latin America, and spread to Spain and the US. Although the program does not destroy data, and a bug in the programming means that it fails to run automatically, anti-virus companies are warning companies of potential administrative problems after it struck 10 Fortune 500 companies in the US, and spread to Britain, affecting a large media organization.
Such a virus highlights the fact that while state-of -the-art anti-virus solutions can be installed at great cost to the company, the network is still at the mercy of careless employees. Such viruses prey on the unsuspecting employees and while this virus doesn’t actually destroy any files, system administrators must remove it from every machine that it infects. Datamonitor estimates that the market for anti-virus solutions will grow from around $1.5 billion in 2000 to around $3.6 billion in 2005. Complementary solutions such as content security products can be more effective in protecting networks from Trojan horse viruses. This market is set to grow from an estimated $124 million in 2000 to $918 million by 2005.
