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August 4, 2001
SirCam
In the shadow of "Code Red", a virus called SirCam is making the rounds. SirCam can infect your desktop system, and it is dangerous. Under the most severe circumstances, the virus can erase your hard drive or fill it up with junk making it unusable.
Like other viruses, SirCam arrives via email. However, it's more difficult to detect than other viruses because
- It changes names each time it is passed.
- It includes an attachment that might seem appropriate to you.
- It sends out a single email at a time, instead of quickly pushing mail to every body in your address book (making more difficult to notice).
The tricky thing about recognizing the SirCam virus is that the infecting system randomly picks out a file from the disk, attaches it to an email message which is subsequently sent to a person from the local address book, and it changes its name to match the attachment.
By changing its name, it tricks the recipient into thinking it is a legitimate message, prompting the recipient to open the attachment, thereby infecting his system. Let's say you work at ABCD company, and you have a file on your system called "ABCD-Q4plan.doc". If the virus picks out that file and sends it to somebody else at ABCD company, the recipient will automatically think that it is legitimate.
As of last report, the message usually has the following phrases within the body of the message:
"Hi! How are you?"
"See you later."
In between, you'll often see one of these four phrases:
I send you this file in order to have your advice
I hope you can help me with this file that I send
I hope you like the file that I send you
This is the file with the information that you ask for
What can you do?
First, as always, make sure that you have the most recent virus list in your active anti-virus software on all systems.
Second, do not open ANY unexpected attachments from anybody, even if you know that person, and even if it looks legit. Instead, call or email your associate to make sure that he sent you that particular message. Only then, should you open it.
Third, don't forward the attachment to anybody else.
This process means that you'll have to notify everybody before you send them attachments, thereby creating a bit more work. But by avoiding the problems of this destructive virus, you'll be happy you took the extra effort.
As always, we will continue to help alert you to virus threats - both in this anti-virus section and via email, through our Insider TipLetter. Subscribe here. (Free)
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