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Virus prevents you asking for help

Clever design

A virus which blocks victims from reaching antivirus web sites or even emailing for help is spreading around the internet after laying dormant for weeks.

MTX was first identified in August and was thought to pose relatively little risk, but its clever design is now leading to widespread problems.

November statistics from antivirus vendor Sophos will show the virus produced the most calls to its help desk during November, although these figures are skewed by the fact victims had no other means of asking for help.

The virus, which is also known as Apology-B, arrives as an email attachment with a variety of different names designed to entice careful users into opening it including NEW_NAPSTER_site.TXT.pif and the cunningly titled IS_LINUX_GOOD_ENOUGH!.TXT.pif. Opening the attachment triggers an infection.

The virus replaces wsock32.dll with a modified version which monitors network traffic. When the virus detects the user sending an email, it will send another to the same recipient. The message will have no subject or body text, only an attachment.

The virus also has the ability to open up a backdoor on a victim's machine. It places a file, called MTX_.exe, on a victim's hard disc drive which, once executed, tries to connect to a website and download further programs to run.

However the bug's most sinister feature is that a user will be prevented from accessing antivirus website from an infected machine or sending emails to specified security firms.

The bug has one very sinister feature: once it infects a user, it's programmed to stop the victim from visiting antivirus Web sites and sending "mayday" emails to antivirus companies.

Users can be infected by MTX only if they haven't updated their antivirus software for the last two months.

The growing prominence of MTX, and other viruses which have lain dormant for weeks before raising their ugly head, shows that people aren't applying this simply procedure. ®

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