A new strain of the troublesome W32.Beagle virus hit many wiscmail users’ e-mail boxes Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Brian Rust, communications manager at the University of Wisconsin Division of Information Technology, assured students that the email system is fully functional and would not be shut down for a number of days as some of the virus-carrying emails claim.
“Your e-mail account will be disabled because of improper using in next three days, if you are still wishing to use it, please, resign your account information,” one such message claimed.
Rust also said the worm-laden e-mails often get opened, because many are sent from administration, support, staff or management addresses from the wisc.edu server.
“It sends a message that looks legitimate,” Rust said, stating this strain of the virus is more sophisticated but still only targets PCs and spares Macintosh mail programs from spreading the virus to other computers. Rust said, however, that does not save Macs from receiving the messages.
The email has been successful with quick saturation of inboxes due to the password-protected .zip files. Rust explained that DoIT has not scanned password-protected files in the past, so this newest strain eluded DoIT security.
To counteract the spread of the virus, DoIT adopted a policy of scanning .zip files and attaching a text file detailing what the compacted file contained.
Amy Unti, a UW junior majoring in English, only knew not to trust the e-mail’s claims that her account would be suspended for days until a friend told her the e-mails were part of a virus. Unti, who got many of the e-mails, added this would have been one of the worst weeks of the semester to have an e-mail problem, too.
“I have been e-mailing back and forth with a professor regarding a paper that is due … I definitely rely on e-mail for communication with my professors, and the thought of having it messed up indefinitely is a bit disconcerting,” Unti said. “Especially at this time of year when lots of people have exams and papers due … if you can’t get to your professor’s office hours it’s really your only other option.”
Rust said people from all over the country and the academic world, including UW System schools, other Big Ten universities and many of the Wisconsin state private and technical colleges, experienced this new virus.
Unfortunately, Rust said this new virus would probably not be the last one.
“[Email users] still need to be vigilant about downloading anti-virus software,” Rust said. Rust suggests checking new virus definitions once a week or whenever people hear of a new virus attacking computers.
