Homepage hits 14,000 worldwide - News

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Homepage hits 14,000 worldwide

By Megan McAuliffe, ZDNet Australia
May 10, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/Homepage-hits-14-000-worldwide/0,139023165,120220900,00.htm

The fast spreading Homepage worm has hit around 14,000 computers on its round the world trip.

Antivirus experts warn that although the pornography virus has been contained, there is still the danger of re-infection.

The self-spreading program began its course in Australia yesterday morning, infecting 50 corporations and 1000 computers, according to antivirus company, Trend Micro.

It also hit approximately 1300 workstations in Hong Kong.

"It's not as big as the Love bug, but the speed is very frightening. It all happened in a matter of three to four hours," Trend Micro's Andy Liou told ZDNet.

"It has been contained, in that it's not spreading from company to company," however, he says from past experience, corporations have been re-infected by a virus because they have not removed every last trace of it.

"If corporations haven't been able to completely eliminate it from every computer or every mailbox, it will come back again. They must practice safe computing practices," he said.

The vbs_homepage.a virus was created by a worm-generating toolkit, it arrives in a person's in-box with the subject line "Homepage" and the message: Hi! You've got to see this page! It's really cool ; O)

The worm is attached to the file "HOMEPAGE.HTML.VBS." which directs the recipient to pornography sites.

"Companies should be blocking emails with vbs attachments, there is no legitimate reason to allow it into the system," he said.

"The only vbs files I know are viruses."

The virus appears to have slipped through the ranks undetected because it did not relate to love or sex, such as the recent Anna Kornikova and Love Matching worm.

"It's a trick that the virus writer used to get past people's defences," he said.