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I’m Nimda infected – what do I do? So, you’ve managed to get a virus, and you’re not sure what to do to combat it? PPC shows you what to do if it’s Nimda The newest and most virulent Internet-borne virus thus far, Nimda, thankfully has no destructive payload – but it very easily could have. It does, however, have the potential to completely screw up the Internet by flooding the wires and fibre that make up the connection between all the computers that form the ‘Net with useless e-mails and code. Experts agree that, while businesses will have made preparations to avoid infection – at least those with IT departments – it’s likely to be the home user that will be the nub of any escalated problem that occurs due to the worm. That’s because, as a breed, we tend not to keep up with patches to Internet Explorer, and we’re all a tad too enamoured of email attachments. It seems we send loads of photos, sounds and all manner of other bits of documents to our friends over the wires. It also seems that very few of us ever bother to turn off HTML in our email clients, which would ensure that plain text emails are all we send. If that’s the case – if we home users are the main problem – then we need to take steps to make sure we’re protected. Here are the steps to take: 1. Download and run Central Command’s Nimda checker and eradicator, which we’ve got here. That will get rid of Nimda if you’ve got it, and make sure you’re starting from a Nimda-free system. 2. Log onto the Windows Update site – click here to do that – then download and install the latest service packs and patches for your version of Internet Explorer – better yet, upgrade to Internet Explorer 6.0 which is now out of beta and available 3. Consider your emailing habits, particularly with regard to how you approach attachments. · In general, view all attachments with suspicion, unless you are specifically expecting someone to send you an attached file. · Never download and open an attachment you’re not sure of – email the sender (or phone if you’re impatient) and ask specifically what it is, and if they did actually send it · Let your correspondents know that you view attachments with suspicion as a matter of course, and that you’d prefer that they didn’t send them unless it was absolutely vital. · If you do send an attachment, also send a confirmation email – separately from the email with the attachment – to let the recipient know that you have sent it intentionally. · If you use Outlook Express as an email client, turn off the auto-preview feature. That way, you can consider the subject line of an email before you click on it to open it. This will help you avoid HTML and scripting worms. If you’re not sure, don’t view it. 4. Invest in an updateable Anti-Virus package. It needn’t cost much, in fact we have the very good free version of AVG available for you to download here, which we’d strongly suggest you download and install if you’re not already protected. 5. Invest in a personal firewall. We recommend Zone Alarm, which all of us on PPC use as a first line of defence when we’re connected. Download it from here, where we’ve got a FAQ on it as well. If you follow those steps to the letter, you should be pretty safe from infection by Internet borne viruses and worms. Remember, they mostly exploit the default actions of older Microsoft Internet products, and if you change the default behaviour, you’ll be a lot safer.
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