Computer Viruses, Not Big and Not Clever

Are computer viruses the work of men with very small penises or are they CIA funded? Either way they are beyond a joke, a jape, a merry quip on a rainy afternoon the people who create these are the lowest of the cyber-world lows. Well that's what I thought until yesterday when Nathalie called from upstairs to say there was a message on the computer that actually caused her to start crying because she thought she had done something wrong.

She was visiting a typical teenage website, pictures of pop stars, clothes - you know the sort of thing that attracts young people when a warning appeared to say that my NAV software had detected a virus, this was followed by a yellow question mark appearing on my toolbar with the following message:








Now this is where things can get a bit nasty if you don't have your wits about you, click on the balloon and you are taken to an 'official' looking site that offers you VirusBurst software - this will help you clean-up your computer. The problem is VirusBurst is a virus, yep you are invited to download a virus, how sick is that?

Fortunately NAV comes with a button that allows you to find out more about viruses, this little bugger creates files within your registry and acts as a trojan horse. Even though NAV had detected and quarrantined the files that had been created I couldn't get rid of the yellow question mark and the balloon that kept popping him so I had to download some software to remove it from the toolbar.

Now I like to think that I'm reasonably I.T savvy, in fact our website describes me as the company's I.T Expert, but I hate to think the damage that could be caused to somebody's system if they clicked on the ballon and followed the download instructions.

It's just another example of the lack of will to do anything more than the absolute basics when it comes to tracking and shutting down the original hosts of this malware.

So be warned - don't fall for VirusBurst.