By Pia Heikkila, 11 October 2001 11:45
NEWS Files downloaded from the Napster alternative site KaZaA could contain evils such as the Love Letter Virus. Security information website Hackers Digest Labs published a warning that six per cent of music, video, documents, images and software downloaded from KaZaA may contain deadly viruses as the service allows anyone to rename files, meaning users cannot tell whether it contains a virus or a legitimate document. A warning on the security website read: "When you do a search for the song named for example, "Can't Touch This" KaZaA will display this as "cant_touch_this.mp3", without displaying the .vbs extension. You cannot infect an MP3 file but the renaming ability allows the Love Letter Virus for instance to disguise as videos, images and executables." Vinny Gulletto from Network Associates urged IT managers to ban any peer-to-peer applications from the corporate network because of the severe security risks: "Very few P2P applications have built-in security at present and I would advice against the use of this type of software in the corporate network," he said.
In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.
Log in or create your silicon.com account below