Since late last week, the Romeo virus has attacked computers across campus.
Allen Rueder, associate director of networking for WU said that it is very similar to the “I love you” virus that was going around last year, which copied itself to everyone and overwrote files on the computers it infected.
So far the Romeo virus has infected many
personal PCs on campus, as well as some units within the Business school and Arts and Sciences laboratories.
“I’m sure it’s a significant mess for people to clean up. For faculty computers that are supported by staff, I’m sure it can take hours to straighten out per machine,” said Rueder, who counted
nearly 10 computers in his own office that had received the virus.
The virus only infects computers that use Microsoft Outlook or Netscape to open email. According to Rueder, these programs automatically open incoming mail, which then executes the virus.
Older programs, such as Pine, will provide the name of the email in the subject line, as well as not opening automatically. Both of these measures can prevent the spreading of the virus.
Mili Joseph uses Outlook Express to open her email, and said that she got the virus, and it was followed by 70 or 80 random emails the next time she opened her email.
“I didn’t have the right antivirus for it,” she said. “Until I got the antiscript for it, there were certain applications that wouldn’t work.” She said that there was no permanent damage to her
computer, the virus was simply “irritating,” and once she installed the antiscript, it only took about 10 minutes to fix.
“People seem to want a certain amount of glitz and automation. The more you want that stuff, the more you become susceptible to these types of problems,” said Rueder.
“If you have javascript enabled in your browser it’s possible for someone to send you an email and then if you copy it or sent it to someone else, the person who sent it to you can get a copy of comments you might make to someone else. Microsoft has all this set up by itself,” Rueder said.
Rueder said that on his own computer, as it is connected to a large number of other computers on campus, he has all of these things turned off. To prevent similar problems with students’
personal computers, he suggests that all javascript and automatic scripting that is turned on by these Microsoft programs by default be turned off.
Rueder said that another preventative measure students can take is to not open any attachments ending in .vbs. This is executable code which would normally not be included as part of an attachment.
Although Rueder did not know where the virus came from, he said that it was written by someone with knowledge of an obscure programming language. He cited a new virus, the Anna Kornakova virus, which behaves in much the same way as Romeo, as being created by a program called “On the fly.”
Rueder said that it is possible to backtrack through emails to find out who the first person at WU was to receive the virus, and then track it back to who it came from, at which point responsibility would leave WU.
“It’s a big deal to have to clean it up. And someone has to decide whether or not they’re going to have to prosecute,” Rueder said. No one at WU is planning on
taking this measure at the time. Rueder said that if this was to occur, the prosecutor would probably be “some big corporation.”

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