A computer virus is spreading around the world and has now reached Starkville.
The e-mail virus, or worm, commonly known as ‘mydoom’ or ‘novarg’ has begun to penetrate computer hard drives on campus. The Information Technology Service has made it a priority to help rid MSU of any problems with the new virus.
“Between midnight and 2:20 p.m. Thursday, we cleaned 85,288 infected emails, which is 40 percent of all messages looked at in that time period. The total number was 212,779,” said Mike Argo, Information Technology Services security compliance officer.
“There are at least two versions of the worm that we are aware of,” Geoff Guyton, extension services network service analyst said. “The two versions are w32.mydoom.b @mm and w32.novarg.a@mm.”
The virus first appeared in Russia, but there is no clear evidence as to whether or not it was created in Russia. It is sent to computers by e-mail. The e-mail contains an attachment that, if opened, opens the computer’s hard drive.
“This open back door allows a possible hacker to get into the computer’s system,” Argo said.
The worm even has its own e-mail capability and can send contaminated e-mails to other computers by going through the owner’s electronic address book. Whoever receives the e-mail is likely to open the file because the sender will be a recognized name. Floppy disks are also susceptible to the virus.
The virus slowly eats at the hard drive, causing damage that can render the computer useless.
“The attachment to the e-mail is the part containing the virus,” said Tim Griffin, director of systems and networks at ITS, “If you don’t know the sender, then quickly delete the e-mail.”
The subject line of the email often contains something familiar, like ‘return mail,’ ‘delivery mail’ or ‘hello,’ said Argo. This is called the ‘spoofing address.’
The virus causes a computer and the Internet to act sluggishly. Sunday the virus was supposed to ‘come alive’ and attack two Web sites, Microsoft.com and SCO.com causing a denial of service attack. That essentially means that it prevents legitimate users from using a particular service.
Both ITS and Extension Services advise that all students, faculty and staff download the Norton Symantec Antivirus software. The Symantec Web site has the ability to allow each user to scan his or her hard drive to check for the virus.