Klez: The devious intruder

The past couple of weeks saw the Klez virus - more particularly the Klez.h

variant - unleashed itself on computers the world over. The Klez virus is an

Internet worm or I-worm that exploits security weaknesses in the Internet

Explorer program to install itself on your computer.

The virus enters the system as an email attachment and is able to install

itself on the computer whenever the infected message is viewed. It then has the

capability to infect files on the system. The virus is also able to spread to

other connected computers via email.

It randomly picks up files that are present on the disk and sends them along

as attachments. The program, however, changes the "from" field in the

email to the address selected at random from the address book. Thus in addition

to the embarrassment of having your personal data emailed around, it also

appears that your data was sent by someone else! The Klez.H variant is even more

devious because it positions itself as a fix for the previous variants.

Thankfully most major antivirus software companies including MicroWorld have

released utilities that detect and delete the virus. The other Internet worm

that has slowly been making its presence felt over the past few days is the Masana I -Worm. This virus, like the Klez virus spreads itself using email attachments. It is able to exploit a breach in the Windows NT security system and is able to run with administrator privileges. It also randomly sends out email and can also reply to unread mails in your mail folder.

Since both these viruses travel via email the best action one can take is not

to open attachments that look suspicious. Most of the infected mail would have

some text in the body or subject that really doesn't seem to have been sent from

the sender. An example would be: "Welcome to my hometown" in the

subject of an infected email. In these cases simply deleting the email would

deny the virus entry to your system. Then again, it always helps to have the

latest updated anti-virus software installed on your system.

Visit the Web site www.mwti.net and

keep checking for the latest viruses news and their free fixes.