Is there a new variant of the MyLife virus out at the moment

Asks Melanie

A. A new variant of the MyLife mass-mailing virus was detected by antivirus companies on 12 April 2002, and it is believed that this outing is the eighth for the virus - but as it has been around for a while most virus software is aware of it and will detect it on your computer.

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Q. Does this virus delete your hard drive

A. Earlier versions of the MyLife virus did delete PC hard drives labelled on your (or your company's) computer system as the D drive, through to the I drive - but it is believed that this version of the virus, known as MyLife.H, is less destructive.

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Q. What does MyLife.H do

A. As a mass mailing (worm) virus it forwards itself to all the addresses in a Outlook address book and carries an email attachment, which when opened downloads itself onto your PC. It also sends messages to all contacts in MSN Messenger.

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Q. How can I tell if I have been sent the virus on email

A. There are several ways to detect the MyLife virus in your email inbox. The attachment will sometimes purport to be a screen saver known as peeeeeep.mpeg.scr or more simply an attachment called My Life.scr.

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The subject line of the email will usually read "peeeeeep" or "my life ohhhhhhhhhhhhh". The size of the attachment is 12,888 Bytes.

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Once you click on the attachment the worm virus is activated and will show you a picture (these can vary) and then installs itself onto your system (into your System folder as My Life.scr). It also adds its start-up key to your registry; the email is then forwarded onto your entire address book when you next access the Internet.

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Q. Does the virus send any other message in the email

A. It does not carry any other attachment but encourages you to open the attachment, by saying:

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Hiii, How are youuuuu

Look at the digital picture it's my love (verrry verrry funnnny).

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Depending on which version of the virus has been sent to you, this message can change its picture and tell you to take a look at an image of my car, my new house, bill caricature, the notepad (I promise you'll love it), the 3D picture (it is very sad).

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Q. Is the virus known under any other aliases

A. It is also known by most antivirus software as W32.Mylife.I@mm and W32.Mylife@mm.

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Q. How can I get rid of the virus on my PC

A. First of all do not open the email attachment and run the latest version of any antivirus software. Any version you have on your PC can be automatically updated by visiting the manufacturers website, alternatively if you don't have antivirus software installed check out these websites for more information and automatic downloads:

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http://f-secure.com

http://www.symantec.com

http://www.mcafeeb2b.com

http://antivirus.cai.com.

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Q. How often should I install virus protection software

A. As viruses are written all the time it is difficult to ensure that you're protected all the time, but if you update your software every six months or every year (free updates are usually available via the Internet) then you should be able to work relatively safely.

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Q. How does anti virus software work

A. A good anti virus software package will use a combination of techniques to detect a virus. One such technique is pattern matching (used to attack known viruses) whereby the anti virus program scans a file by looking for a sequence of bytes within the programme code (called a fingerprint or pattern) which uniquely identify the virus.

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But as there are thousands of viruses out there it is not an efficient technique on its own.

In addition to this, a number of polymorphic viruses exist which rearrange the code bytes of a virus each time it infects a file, or use encryption that can make detection even more difficult. Such a technique is very thorough, but it only detects viruses it knows about, so are always out of date. It is best to run an anti virus program that can also detect unknown viruses, this type of software will check files via inoculation - basically it checks whether a file has changed (all files will change when infected).

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This system also has some limitations in that it does not always detect macro viruses. Heuristic scanning is the best method of detecting macro viruses as its software analyses the program code to see if it has any features common to known viruses, the more common features found in a scan the more likely it is to carry a virus.

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All leading anti viral programmes will use a combination of these methods to detect viruses.

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Q. What exactly is a worm virus

A. A worm virus is self-replicating. It copies itself continuously on your PC and uses up the memory - it can attach itself to email and automatically mail your entire address book.

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By Karen Anderson