“School girl fantasies gone bad.” If that sucked you in, you’re not the only one to fall victim to it. The Kama Sutra computer worm, discovered on Jan. 16, 2006, started spreading throughout the Internet via attachments in e-mails with similar subjects. Those whose computers were infected thus far should have experienced its affects on Friday, February 3, 2006.
Be careful, though. Those whose computers haven’t been infected should be extra cautious. The Kama Sutra worm, also named by Symantec as W32.Blackmal.E@mm is not over yet. It will attempt to take effect on the third day of every month overwriting most Microsoft Office Suite documents, PDFs, and some compressed file formats, making them irrecoverable.
Due to this witty design, people may not notice the effects until it is too late to recover documents. The next day the worm will take action again will be on March 3.
According to Steve Dailey, assistant director of computing and networking services (CNS), the virus attempts to disable anti-virus software.
With your virus scanner disabled, it will be unable to alert you of being infected with the worm. Dailey encourages students to run the scanning tool available from the Symantec site as well as updating virus definitions within the anti-virus program, while disconnected from the school network. Coming to the Student Computing Help desk for proper reinstallation of the software is recommended for infected computers.
In addition to running the scanning tool as well as a full virus computer scan, Dailey also recommends backing up any important files to an external medium, such as a USB key or CD just in case you get infected.
The last time a big computer threat struck the university was in September 2003 when two computer worms named Welchia and MSBlast, or “Blaster,” caused substantial parts of the school’s network to shut down.
Although the effects of the Kama Sutra worm should not be as drastic as those back in 2003, strong measures should be taken by students to protect their computers. The university has provided free antivirus software to all students since 2003 when they purchased a $10,000 corporate site license of Norton Antivirus.
If you have not installed the antivirus software provided by the university, you may download it from the student computing website accessible from www.fairfield.edu.
CNS sent out a campus announcement on Feb. 2 warning students of the possibilities of the worm outbreak. CNS works at preventing such threats from intruding into the campus network, according to Dailey, by keeping students aware of such threats via e-mail as well as configuring firewalls to stop certain traffic and monitoring the network for unusual traffic.
“Students should always think twice about opening attachments. Many students have been infected with viruses through e-mail or Instant Messenger and don’t even realize it,” Dailey said.
Students should never download any unknown attachments even if from people they know.
“The best thing to do is to contact the sender and make sure that the attachment is legitimate,” he added.
All e-mail that comes into the mail server that support all faculty and staff accounts is scanned for viruses. CNS also installs and maintains anti-virus software on all faculty and staff workstations to drastically reduce the spreading of viruses over the network, Dailey said.
Student e-mail accounts are maintained by Administrative Computing – SCT. Every e-mail coming and going through the student account is scanned for viruses.
If any threat is found in an attachment, it is automatically removed from the attachment, according to Account Executive Kevin Clancy at SCT. The e-mail server is also scanned once a week for viruses and updated hourly with new virus definitions.
For students seeking assistance, the Student Computing Help Desk is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 4:30 p.m. and will assist students with infected machines. The student computing Web site, www.fairfield.edu/studentcomputing, contains some helpful information as well step-by-step instructions on installing, updating and running the anti-virus software.
The help desk can be contacted at x4069 and also by e-mail at studentcomputing@mail.fairfield.edu.
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