Anti-virus companies reported Tuesday that the “goner” virus was making its way into computers around the world - including MSU’s campus.
The worm arrives through an e-mail message with the subject line “Hi” and carries an attachment called “goner.scr,” in an attempt to fool users into believing they are being sent a screen saver.
The message body reads, “How are you? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you. I am in a harry, I promise you will love it!”
If the file is opened, the virus infects a computer, mass mailing itself to all the contacts in a user’s address book, and also through the Mirabilis’ ICQ Internet chat program - a previously unused method of distributing viruses.
Symantec, a provider of anti-virus and security software, rates the worm as a four out of a five-point scale, said company spokeswoman Kelly Davis.
“The threat is based on how many submissions we get, the damage it does and the rate it gets distributed,” she said.
The worm attacks program files on the user’s hard drive, mostly belonging to anti-virus or personal firewall software. But it also leaves traces of itself in the infected computer to create a “backdoor,” which the worm’s author or another malicious hacker could use to launch a Denial-of-Service attack through the user’s computer.
The backdoor gives the worm a dangerous potential to take down systems. A Denial-of-Service attack uses a number of infected, remotely controlled machines to flood a network with data, preventing any legitimate traffic from accessing a network. It also can disrupt connections between two individual machines, or service to one specific computer.
University officials say they aren’t very worried about the worm’s potential effect on campus networks. Doug Nelson, network manager at the computer laboratory, said most departments keep their virus definitions up-to-date.
“I think people are more educated about these worms in general, so we don’t expect it to get around campus.” he said. “The biggest thing we like to get out to people is to be very wary of attachments.”
But the virus has already been circulating on campus. Computers belonging to the MSU Department of Police and Public Safety were affected by the virus. And the worm has even shown itself in some students’ e-mail boxes.
“I got it this morning, twice,” civil engineering sophomore A.J. Somsel said Wednesday.
Somsel received two e-mails from his mother and his girlfriend that included the virus.
Somsel said he isn’t too worried about the virus either. His computer’s operating system, Windows 2000, has a process built into the program to prevent these types of attacks, he said.
Even if computer users have the same system as Somsel, experts say it’s important to keep their anti-virus definitions and programs up-to-date, and do so as soon as possible.
“It’s fast,” said Wade Stevens, a technician at Best Buy, 220 W. Grand River Ave. “Most people might not even realize they have it yet.”
As of Tuesday night, Symantec released new virus definitions for their popular Norton Anti-Virus software, and a fix for infected computers. Both are available on its Web site, www.symantec.com.
