Coffee Break: Brace yourself for next generation of viruses

Viruses are beginning

a destructive path, with few options to protect against infected e-mail

Whether you call it I Love You, the Love Bug or the Killa from Manila, the recent deployment of the problematic e-mail virus has had far-reaching results for technology users.

While the damage done by I Love You was not as disastrous as it might have been, the next generation of viruses modeled on the Love Bug are not as kind.

Brian Rigsby, senior manager with the Technology Solutions Group, a division of Whitlock Selim & Keehn, said his team heard about the virus the night before it hit, went into the office early and began calling clients to warn them.

Because the virus overwrote mp3 files, which are music files, and jpg files, which are graphics, most standard applications were not affected, Rigsby said.

But even if systems were not severely damaged, businesses that picked up the virus did pay a price.

"Clients who did get it, who did open it, the impact they had was from lost productivity," he said.

Because the virus was new and unpredictable, Rigsby said, companies "had to isolate the virus and determine what it would and could do, and shut down e-mail and computer systems as a precautionary measure."

The main impact for clients who got the virus was "at least a day lost in productivity, but the next day pretty much everybody was up and running," Rigsby said.

That's the good news. The bad news is, I Love You really was a love letter compared to the new and improved e-mail-borne viruses it has spawned.

"The virus writers of the I Love You were rather nice," Rigsby said. "There's been a lot of thought about why just graphics and music files with one little change in the code, it could have destroyed systems. ... It could have been a hundredfold more damaging than it was," he added.

But where the authors of I Love You failed, or perhaps pulled their punches, others are going for the knockout.

"It's the variants on the virus coming out now that have the potential to be the most destructive," Rigsby said.

Variations are "destructive to the nature that they will overwrite key system files necessary for the computer to boot and operate. Once you open the virus, the next time you start the computer it won't boot," he said.

Like the original Love Bug, once opened, the variant virus proliferates through an e-mail system, sending itself to everyone in a user's personal address book.

If there has been a positive effect from the virus, it has been a new awareness of exposure, Rigsby said.

One thing he saw immediately was a tightening of security policies and, in some cases, the institution of policies prohibiting personal use of e-mail.

"It also raised awareness of some vulnerability of Microsoft programs," he said. As a result, Microsoft is taking a hard look at its programs, and there is now a patch available for Outlook Express on the Microsoft Web site.

According to Rigsby, awareness is the best defense in avoiding viruses. Don't open attachments from unfamiliar senders.

And beware of executable file formats.

I Love You carried a vbs suffix, meaning it was a Visual Basic Script file.

Visual basic is a programming language. There are legitimate reasons to send vbs files patches for software programs being the main example.

However Rigsby warned that viruses can come in any executable format, including html, exe and com.

And while the bad news is bad ... well, it actually does get worse.

"Some of the variants have not been widespread but have arrived, not as an attachment, but as the e-mail message itself. The virus is transmitted when the e-mail message is opened," Rigsby said.

So, what is a computer user to do?

Installing antivirus protection, setting policies and educating staff help, but essentially, "the only safe way to avoid e-mail viruses is to not use e-mail," Rigsby said.

Since that is not really an option for most businesses, chances are that I Love You represents the tip of a very large iceberg.

"As long as there are programmers," Rigsby said, "there will probably be viruses."