Avirus called the Naked Wife virus is circulating the computer world. In a strongly computer dependent community such as OU a virus can have catastrophic consequences.

Dennis Aebersold, vice president for information technology and chief information officer, said the potentially dangerous Naked Wife virus is transported through e-mails. It is possible for a computer to become infected if it receives e-mail from off campus, Aebersold said. The destructive virus can essentially disable the computer, he said.

There is no physical damage to the computer but the operating system needs to be rebuilt which could entail several hours of labor, Aebersold said. Data can also be lost.

According to information provided by OU information technology the virus is disguised as a movie clip. Once the attachment is opened the virus copies itself to a e-mail directory and displays a window entitled Flash, which reads Jib Jab Loading.Finally the virus will send a e-mail message to each recipient in the e-mail address book, according to the information.

Aebersold said experts suspect that it is from outside the United States but has reached our shores and has infected a number of corporate computers.

As soon as word was out that a new virus had appeared, OU information technology went to work to keep OU's computers clean.

"Information technology was on top of the outbreak before any virus reached our community," Aebersold said. "Mark McClellan and Joe Grissom assigned their employees to create a solutions immediately after we heard of the virus."

The fast response was successful. He said no computer on campus that is run through the information technology exchange servers has been infected.

Aebersold said people should not open any mail with headers reading naked wife and always be wary of any attachment that they are not expecting from someone they know.

Many OU students do not own their own computer, but use the computer labs on campus to check their e-mail or write papers. Nici Hinkel, macro-computer student assistant, said at the library computer lab there have been any reports of the virus. She said her supervisor and other faculty members warned her about the virus. If a student encounters the message, the lab assistants will tell them not to open the message.

However, in the lab environment, the virus won't cause as much damage as in a personal setting. She said people do not have any personal data on the lab computers. Most people save their data to a disk.

Rob Reynolds, information technology liaison, said more than 50 percent of all American households are on the Internet. In addition, there are other users all over the world without obstacles.

To students or faculty who work on their thesis their computer data is extremely important.

"What is on their computers is more valuable to them than the computer is worth," he said.

Reynolds said there are two types of viruses. He calls one kind prank viruses which cause some trouble but do not hurt the computer and then there are the criminal viruses that cause damage to someone's physical or intellectual property.

Virus threats such as this one teach a lesson, he said. "Back up your files regularly," Reynolds said.


For more virus alerts visit www.cert.org/nav/alerts.html.
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