AFRO-NETS> Now it's getting personal - the prying email virus (2)

[Dr Brian Pazvakavambwa <pazvakavambwab@who.ch>]

Now it's getting personal - the prying email virus (2)
------------------------------------------------------

Virus unleashed on Daily News (Zimbabwe)
http://www.dailynews.co.zw/daily/2001/July/July26/12659.html

By Thomas Deve 

A DEADLY computer virus has run amok in Zimbabwe, hitting possibly 
hundreds of unsuspecting e-mail subscribers. 

One of the worst hit companies is The Daily News. The newspaper's 
main e-mail address was yesterday bombarded with hundreds of messages 
carrying a computer virus that steals documents from a user's files 
or even destroys documents resident in a computer hard drive. 

Investigations yesterday revealed that many other Zimbabwean e-mail 
users, whose documents are currently in circulation, are not aware of 
this development. 

The mail intercepted at The Daily News shows that subscribers whose 
mail and private details were being literally stolen and circulated, 
were mainly from banks, insurance companies, Internet Service Provid-
ers (ISPs), universities and the media. 

Some of the documents stolen included minutes of meetings at First 
Bank and Econet, as well as the confidential memos of members of 
staff at The Financial Gazette. 

Messages from Cottco and various subscribers at Nicoz in Bulawayo 
have been hit, while a Chapman Golf Club document whose subject 
is"Checklist PGA" has been circulated by the virus. 

Many messages from academics and universities were similarly for-
warded to e-mail addresses. All the documents carry a random file 
name with doc., bat, ink or pif appended to them. 

The body text of the e-mail attachments carries a simple message such 
as, "Hi! How are you? I send this file in order to have your advice. 
See you later. Thanks" or "Please let me have your comments." 

Zimbabwe Online (ZOL), an ISP whose servers are equipped with anti-
virus software, has warned that the virus could devastate the coun-
try's networked computer systems. "Over the past few hours, we have 
been intercepting this virus at the rate of seven per minute," said 
David Behr of ZOL. "If the virus gets into your computer, it will 
send copies of itself to everyone on your e- mail address book and it 
also attaches some of your documents and sends those to the recipi-
ents, potentially circulating your company information to a wide au-
dience," he warned. 

Meanwhile, Jacob Jackson of Reliant Computers has warned people to 
read any virus warning message. He urged them to delete any message 
whose content approximates what The Daily News has intercepted.

--
Dr Brian Pazvakavambwa, MBChB, MPH
The World Health Organization (WHO)
Department of HIV/AIDS
Global and Inter-Regional Coordination 
20 Avenue Appia
CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
Tel: +41-22-791-4564
Fax: +41-22-791-4834
mailto:pazvakavambwab@who.int
http://www.bpazva.8m.com

--
[From the Moderator: The Sircam Virus is affecting many computers all 
over the world. You are strongly urged to run the virus fix (ca. 70 
kB) from Symantec below. It will scan your computer and, if neces-
sary, remove the virus for you.

The Web URL is:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/FixSirc.com

DN Mod.]


--
Send mail for the `AFRO-NETS' conference to `<afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.
Mail administrative requests to `<majordomo@usa.healthnet.org>'.
For additional assistance, send mail to:  `<owner-afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.