Protection from Chernobyl virus

VIRUS European organizations at risk from virus infection Press release from Symantec reveals that research, carried out by Secure Computing, has shown that thousands of European corporate organizations are at risk from virus infection. In a test of global anti-virus solutions which determined their success in both detection and disinfection, it was found that Norton AntiVirus 5.0 is able to detect and repair 100% of inthe-wild viruses. The research showed that users of Dr. Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit version 7.93 are at risk of infection from eight in-the-wild viruses, including two strains of the CIH virus.

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Network Associates VirusScan 4.0.2 and update 4015 is unable to repair the Natas boot sector virus and incapable of properly disinfecting a common macro virus. Trend OfficeScan failed to repair two viruses and was unable to completely repair a further six. C o m m e n t i n g on the results o f the r e s e a r c h a spokesman for the company said, "There is now little differentiation between leading products in terms of their ability to detect viruses. For all users, but particularly corporate organizations, detecting a virus is of little value if the anti-virus software they are using is incapable of disinfection also. Vendors should be striving towards providing complete protection - detection and disinfection."

NEWS Protection from Chernobyl virus S

Ymantec has r e a s s u r e d N o r t o n A n t i V i r u s customers that their systems will be protected from the Chernobyl virus predicted to hit on 26 April 1999. The protection depends on customers carrying out regular virus definition updates through the online service LiveUpdate. The Chernobyl virus is predicted to strike on 26 April because it is the 13th anniversary of the Chernobyl d i s a s t e r . It has the p o t e n t i a l to e r a s e hard drives and corrupt a PC's

"It has the

potential to erase

hard

B I O S . S y m a n t e c claims

that Norton AntiVirus 5.0 can not o n l y d e t e c t but

drives and

also r e p a i r any files infected by the virus. In addition to the definition ~,v,oD|nl~o" and fix, a kill_cih.exe tool has b e e n d e v e l o p e d to assist o t h e r a n t i - v i r u s solution users who find their n e t w o r k s or PCs infected with the latest variant of the CIH virus.

corrupt a PC's

For further information, contact Symantec Customer S e r v i c e s Centre on: +44 171 6 1 6 5600; Web." www. symantec, co. uk.

Computer Fraud & Security April 1999 3723/99/$20.00~ 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved