An alert is out on a high-risk virus that is expected to attack computer systems worldwide, according to a report by Gulf News. It said that the fast spreading virus is known as "VBS_VBSGW.Z" with aliases of "Mawanella" and "VBSGW.Z". It propagates by sending copies of itself as attachment via email to all entries in an infected system's contact list.
After it sends e-mails, or if the infected system does not have an application installed, the worm displays messages:
"Subject Line: Mawanell
Attachment: Mawanella.vbs
Message Text: Mawanella is one of the Sri Lanka's Muslim Village. This brutal incident happened here 2 Muslim Mosques & 100 Shops are burnt. I hat(e) this incident. What about you? I can destroy your computer. I didn't do that because I am a peace-loving citizen"
The message is accompanied by the picture of a burning house. "Viruses are the fastest means of causing harm to a large spectrum of people. The damage they cause is huge. Once again, this illustrates that computer users are still opening suspicious files, even after the media attention given to last week's "VBS_Homepage" outbreak.
Attachment files from unknown sources should be deleted immediately," said Harish Kunnath, Paramount Computer Systems managing director. The virus is a visual basic script (VBS) worm which copies itself to a "Mawanella.vbs" file in the Windows 9X/ME directory or to WINNT/Windows 2000 system32 directory – Albawaba.com
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