Wednesday, April 11, 2001

ZDNet: Story: Protect yourself! A pair of lethal viruses lurks on the horizon
One of the earliest, and most famous, virus to damage a PC's BIOS is Chernobyl, or CIH. The CIH virus, triggered on the anniversary date of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, April 26, infected more than a million PCs in Korea and resulted in more than $250 million in damages. Be aware. CIH is still around, and its second anniversary is in two weeks.

Similar to CIH is another virus called Kriz. Triggered on December 25, Kriz clears the information in the BIOS. If you have the Kriz virus, Symantec has a tool to remove it. Even if you don't have Kriz, its threat still lingers. This past December, several antivirus companies noticed that Kriz had piggybacked with other, newer viruses such as Bymer. That's yet another reason to keep your antivirus signature files up to date.

Now there's a more sophisticated virus called Magistr. Because it is a mass mailer, like Melissa, Magistr can spread quickly. Since it changes its subject, body, and attached file names with each new infection, Magistr can also be tricky for antivirus software to detect. What started as a trickle of reports worldwide has become a steady stream. Within the last month and half, Magistr has climbed from obscurity to the penultimate position on the MessageLabs top threats list.
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2706608,00.html

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