Trojan.Zasil is the latest virus affecting computers this month with an infection length up to 16,384 bytes according to www.norton.com.
Trojan.Zasil is a Trojan Horse that allows a remote operator to control an infected system according to www.norton.com.
Trojan Horse does not e-mail itself; it must be e-mailed from one account to another. According to www.norton.com., this virus may appear with the subject of “free video” in an e-mail account, or in the form of a joke program or software.
Kinie Biandudi is one of the many students who have received a virus on their computer from e-mail attachments.
“I was checking my e-mail from someone that I knew, and the computer scanned the attachment and it said that I had a virus,” said Biandudi, 23, a senior psychology student from St. Petersburg.
Most viruses are e-mailed to people, said Angelo Tsoukalas, owner and technical manager of CompuWiz, a store in Daytona Beach.
“A lot of people think that if you open the attachment you will get the virus, but if you don’t touch the e-mail then you will not get the virus,” she said.
“It basically takes control away from you. Some will disable a program so you can’t use it; others will cause the same program to keep opening documents. The best protection to have is any type of anti-virus protection,” said Brandon Johnson, a junior marketing student from Florida City.
A lot of students are not taking the proper precautions when it comes to protecting their computers against viruses, Tsoukalas said.
“Some of them feel that they have a virus protection program because it came with the operating system,” she said. “But the only problem is that there might be a 30-day trial or a two months trial and therefore they expire, and don’t have the latest virus definitions.”
A lot of people are also infecting their computers with viruses from downloading music from Internet sites.
“With some of these sites, you can pretty much get infected even if you have a virus protector,” Tsoukalas said.
“When students have the opportunity to download music, they can download an infected file into their system. If it is a very good virus then it can go through the virus protector” Tsoukalas said.
Though not common, it can happen, Tsoukalas said.
Virus protectors with current definitions should provide adequate defense against viruses.
“The most vulnerable people to get computer viruses are the people who download music files, and of course the people who do not have a virus protection program that is updated,” Tsoukalas said.
Tsoukalas recommends students to use Norton, which is an anti-virus protection system that can be installed on your computer from the Internet.
“For $39.99, students can enjoy a one year subscription from Norton along with the benefit of knowing that their computer is protected from viruses,” Tsoukalas said.
“Students who have a network in their home should back up the important information on a daily basis.
“Information from these networks can be saved on a floppy disk, ZIP disk or CD-ROM.”
“They have to do that because they can get hit by a nasty virus and lose everything.”
Running into roadblocks and dead ends, is how Tsoukalas describes the process of repairing computers with viruses.
“Sometimes it can be as simple as running the clean up program, and sometimes it can be as grueling as days and days of coming back to it,” she said.
Computer systems slowing down, programs not working properly and documents and files beginning to become corrupted may be signs of your computer containing a virus, Tsoukalas said.
There are Web sites that specialize in computer virus information: www.norton.com and www.mcafee.com