A virus without an attachment ?!

It has been understood by many that to get infected by a virus you have to open an attachment. That is what we thought too, so it came as a nasty surprise the other day to learn in fact you do not have to do anything, except open the email, even without an attachment, to get infected.

Just recently our email auto protect (a wonderful product from Symantec that scans all incoming email for viruses before they are downloaded onto your computer) started flashing and a new window opened with those 5 menacing letters, VIRUS.

Thankfully we were not too alarmed as this seems to happen once every two weeks. All we had to do is select the part that says delete the infected attachment, and hey presto the email is clean. Well, that is what we understood then, but that was before we met the Kakworm (who thinks of these names ??!) virus.

Our immediate concern arose when the antivirus software told us it had deleted the attachment but then our email address jammed, we tried time and time again to download the incoming messages but to no avail.

The reason for this is really very simple; there is no attachment. This nasty virus actually attaches itself to the body of the email as a signature, and all you have to do is open the email (simply by using your preview pane will suffice) and that is sufficient to let the virus loose to do its work on your computer.

The virus works especially well with Outlook Express, and you will be happy to know that it is not the most deadly of viruses, however it does serve as a warning that not all viruses are in attachments. One other word of warning, while we love Symantec, and strongly believe in their products a small discrepancy did arise when researching this virus. Our antivirus software housed on our computer (which we update every two days) informed us that the kakworm virus was present but the fixkakworm link that is on Symantecs site advised there was not; so we suggest you make sure you update your antivirus definitions as frequently as possible, and scan at least once a week.

To read more about this virus we send you in the direction of Symantec :

https://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/wscript.kakworm.html

Oh and you will be happy to know that our system is no clean (fingers crossed !!).