Surfmore.net E-School Archives

Today's E-School is on klez: the virus that just won't die. The klez virus is making its third round, living over seven months, making it the most persistent virus ever. Klez has brought 2000 infections daily. One in every 300 e-mail's contains a klez virus.

Klez is a piece of software pieced together, meaning it can do more things than just corrupt your data. It can also be a nuisance. Klez usually comes in the form of a(n) attachment in the inbox of a victims email client. It uses many different subject lines, such as: "Klez removal tool." It can also generate custom names by piecing together names of files on the persons' hard drive that sent it to you.

As soon as the e-mail is previewed or the attachment is double clicked. Klez takes all the addresses in the victims address book and searches the hard drive for any other addresses from other programs. Then klez copies one of the address book entries and send the email to the whole address book using that one address entry. Making it hard to find out who it really came from. So in other words it disguises itself. So the people that get infected are the people sending it, the person it uses to send it through (the address book entry it selects to identify itself as) and the people that get the actual message. So to answer the question "What can it do". It can do a number of things. Some included are... Make your system run slow (considered the nuisance part of the virus), make your system respond funny and the most lethal.. Make your system not work. What it does is it stores itself in your computer and on a specified day of the month it will trigger (on any computer its on..for anyone) and corrupt your windows operating system beyond repair. In order to get this fixed you have to reformat the entire hard drive and reinstall windows.

The most important thing you can do is never open a attachment from anyone. Even if its from your family. Klez can gather information you might be expecting by getting info from emails sent previously. So no matter what it says do not open it. They can put it on a floppy disk and bring it to you if its important. Also, keep your virus software up to date. All big virus companies such as Norton and Macafee have the ability to update within the program. Get info on your antivirus, its important. Also read-up on the latest viruses. I recommend Symantec's web page(creators of Norton antivirus) at http://www.Symantec but you may get info on viruses elsewhere. Enjoy.