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Beware! Your holiday greeting could be a virus

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

Ilaina Jonas

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NEW YORK: A newly discovered computer worm, sent under guise of a holiday

greeting, has popped up in the United States and Europe and, if activated, could

destroy personal computers, experts said on Wednesday.

The Reeezak worm enters a computer as an e-mail message in Microsoft Corp.

Outlook with a subject line "Happy New Year" and an attachment, "Christmas.exe",

which a recipient may think, is a Christmas card.

The worm can disable selective keys on the infected computer's keyboard and

delete all the files found in the Windows System Directory, rendering the

computer inoperable, said Ian Hameroff, director of antivirus solutions for

Computer Associates International Inc.

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Because the worm, a self-propagating virus, sends itself to every e-mail in

an address book, recipients are more likely to open the attachment because it

appears to come from a recognized source.

"If it were launched in June, many people would be suspicious of it, but

since it is the holidays and you may be expecting to receive such greetings from

friends and colleagues you may trust this and receive a gift you aren't exactly

expecting," Hameroff said.

Hameroff recommends recipients of e-mail messages that come with unsolicited

attachments call the sender to verify they sent it before opening the attachment

and possibly activating a virus.

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Reeezak first appeared in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe and

was detected later in the United States, where Hameroff guessed thousands of

computers have been infected.

Computer Associates rated the worm a medium to high risk. Symantec Corp.'s

Security Response unit had not yet rated it Wednesday afternoon and McAfee.com

had it at a low risk threat.

A message in the body of the Reeezak e-mail reads (with the first word

misspelled):

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"Hii

I can't describe my feelings

But all i can say is

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Happy New Year :)

bye"

Other names for the worm are: W32.Zacker.C@mm and W32.Maldal.C@mm.

(C) Reuters Limited.

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