The name Osama bin Laden is now frightening people in a new realm -- cyberspace.
The new scare comes in the form of an Internet bug that has quickly moved from the US to Asia, with South Korea reporting several attacks just days after the "bin Laden" virus hit the US. While not destructive, the worm will cause some minor headaches.
PHOTO: AFP
"The tricky virus makes use of people's curiosity and employs timely and interesting titles to catch the users attention," said Ben Tu (
"That's why we anticipate the bin Laden virus may spread quickly in the short term."
According to another anti-virus software company, Trend Micro Corp (
"The virus was first detected in the US three days ago, and it spread to Asia yesterday," said Yulanda Liao (廖立茹), public relations manager at Trend Micro Taiwan.
The new Internet worm lands in a user's computer via an Internet connection and appears as an e-mail named "bin Laden toilet paper," "Saddam Hussein & bin Laden in love" or "Is Osama bin Laden bad-loved."
The content of the letter is empty and has an attached file called "Binladen_brasil.exe."
The bug is highly contagious.
"Your computer can get infected even if you don't open the attachment," Tu said.
"As long as you preview the e-mail, you become a victim."
According to Tu, the virus propagates by sending copies of itself to all the names listed in an infected user's address book. In addition, it will transmit the user's entire hard disk content onto the Internet, enabling others to download any of the users' files. "Which means your personal or classified data could be made available around the world," Tu said.
At the end of the working day yesterday, the virus had not yet appeared in Taiwan, and both anti-virus operators are still ranking the bug as "light" on the virus-damage scale.
"Our customer service rep-resentatives got about 10 calls today inquiring information about the bin Laden virus, but no one reported an infection," Liao said.
To avoid the virus, Trend Micro's Liao urges the public to set their e-mail box window to "non-preview" status and to download the updated anti-virus codes from software Web sites or http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-020.asp.
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