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These seemingly harmless e-mail subject lines on a computer screen may in fact be the work of Alua or Beagle.B, the most recent mass-mailing worms to infiltrate University computers.
Alua and Beagle.B are "viruses in the wild," which means they circulate through the Internet. E-mail is their chosen medium of propagation.
The most common way computers can become infected by an e-mail virus is by opening an infected attachment.
"Once someone in the U.Va. mail server opens it, it starts spreading the virus and bogging down the network," ITC Help Desk employee Wade Carruth said. "If they're not expecting an attachment they shouldn't open it -- but people do anyways because they're curious."
The University has seen an increased number of e-mail viruses this year. Some of them, such as Beagle.B, are related to previous worms.
"The first Beagle was called Beagle.A and this week we have Beagle.B," said Shirley Payne, director of security coordination and policy for ITC. "Some hacker has looked at the code for one virus and made it into basically a new version of the same thing."
Another virus, Netsky.B, was discovered Wednesday. It has not infiltrated University computers, but is being watched closely by ITC because of its severe threat level and widespread infection rate in other areas.
"They move so rapidly it doesn't take very long for them to get here," Payne said.
Symantic, the University's Internet security company, also has attributed a high threat level to Beagle.B.
Preventative measures students can take to protect their computers from the worms are to update anti-virus software as often as possible, never open suspicious email attachments and keep operating systems up to date.
"When Norton [Anti Virus] scans your computer the virus will show up," Carruth said. "As long as you're updating it regularly it will tell you what the virus is."
Payne said she sometimes updates her Norton Anti Virus as often as twice a day to ensure protection.
There are also specific fix tools available through the ITC or Symantec Anti Virus Research Center Web sites that can be downloaded and run to fix a computer.
Payne said viruses developed today spread faster and can cause more damage than older viruses.
"There have been some real nasty ones this year," Carruth said. "There's always something new coming out all the time but I feel like this year there's been a heavy instance of mass-mailing things in the U.Va. network."
Viruses are difficult to completely eliminate because they are easily copied and modified by hackers. People who do not update their computers can store old viruses for a long time.
"Viruses never really go away," Payne said.
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