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Of viruses, IT and the Christmas Grinch
IT managers will be lucky if all they have to deal with this Christmas is the hangover from the office party. More likely they'll be battling against a new wave of computer viruses. But will it be a white Christmas or a very black New Year? Sally Watson postpones the festive celebrations to find out...

By Sally Watson

Published: Friday 15 December 2000

What does your office get up to in the week before Christmas? However dedicated the staff are, most likely they'll be slacking off a little before the festive break.

Emails containing jokes, cards and screensavers are becoming a regular part of the office Christmas celebrations - but can that bit of harmless fun contain something much more sinister?

According to an end of year report from hosted anti-virus company MessageLabs, its scanners detected a new email virus every three minutes during 2000. In some months that's an average of one virus per 700 emails - up 300 per cent on 1999.

Alex Shipp, virus technologist at MessageLabs, has a stark warning for users. "The ground is now ripe for someone to write a really nasty virus. People that are vigilant over Christmas will be the ones that will have a happy New Year."

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at anti-virus vendor, Sophos, warned Christmas is a dangerous time of the year. "We've already seen viruses which claim to be Christmas-related, like Navidad and Music," he says. "When there's an 'end of term' feeling in the office people tend to be more lax about security."

Navidad is an email worm disguised as a Christmas card which infects systems as soon as it has been opened. The worm, which means 'Nativity' in Spanish, originated in South America and is irritating rather than destructive - but requires an administrator to manually remove it from each infected machine.

W32/Music arrives as an email which promises to play a Christmas carol after it has been opened. Recipients are tempted by the message "Hi, just testing e-mail using Merry Christmas music file, not bad music."

After just a few bars of Merry Christmas, however, the program is already emailing itself to all the contacts in the user's address book - the same propagation method used by the notorious Love Bug.

Virus vendors are increasingly using psychological tricks like this to heighten the impact of their work. You only have to look at the destruction caused by the 'I Love You' virus in May to see why. "If we've learned anything from this year," adds Cluley, "it's that people are too gullible."

Jack Clark, product marketing manager at rival vendor Network Associates, agrees. "It's more about Christmas behaviour than new technology. When something like the Prolin worm with a good looking icon comes along we completely forget to be cautious."

But there's no real evidence to suggest that the festive season is any more dangerous than the rest of the year. In some ways Christmas is actually less dangerous for virus infections, with users out of the office and unable to open email attachments and unwittingly release chaos on the office.

"Anti-virus software is generally pretty good - the weakest link is human beings," admits Cluley. "Users need to be educated and companies have to issue guidelines. People are not being taught to surf and use email safely."

One company which has strict rules on the use of email and the internet is the Co-operative Bank. Staff are issued with special computer security leaflets and are expected to stick closely to the guidelines - or risk losing their job.

Martin Whitehead, head of information security at the bank, says he will be treating the Christmas period like any other day at the office. " If you rely on automation to check all email attachments for viruses, and deny all encrypted attachments - which can't be checked - then the time of year is of no relevance," he says.

Most vendors admit they aren't expecting an epidemic over Christmas, but are encouraging users to be vigilant.

Cluley's suggestion is to ban all email cards, jokes, games and screensavers from the office, but issue a selection of 'official' attachments which have been checked and licensed. "IT needs to act like the Christmas Grinch," he claims.