Virus Alert

Office of the CIO

March 22, 2010

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE:


Greetings UVI Community,

This Technology Update is being sent to alert all users that the Palevo virus has been detected on several workstations on the St. Thomas campus. In an effort to contain the virus as much as possible, we have initiated from the F-Secure manager, a global scan of all workstations currently on the UVI network. The auto scan is transparent to the user; however the user may notice that their system may respond a little slower than normally while the scan is taking place.

Beginning at 4:00 PM today Enterprise Network Services will commence a global network scan of all workstations and appliances connected on the UVI network.

Additional information about this virus is below:

Name : Worm:W32/Auto run
Detection Names : Win32.Worm.Autorun
Worm.P2P.Palevo
Virus:W32/Auto run
Category: Malware
Type: Worm
Platform: W32

Summary
A program that secretly and maliciously integrates itself into program or data files and spreads by integrating itself into more files each time the host program is run.
Additional Details
Auto Run worms spread by copying themselves into the root directories of hard drives and other writable media such as USB memory sticks.
These worms create an autorun.inf file in the root directories of drives they want to infect.

Propagation
The autorun.inf includes the name and path of the actual worm executable.
When an infected media device (such as a CD, DVD or USB drive) is inserted into the computer, the autorun.inf and consequently the actual malicious program is automatically executed.
In addition to drives on the local computer, an Auto run worm can also spread to remote computers by infecting shared network drives.
Payload
Members of the Auto Run family also often contain other functionality in addition to just spreading.
This infection method is often used to propagate malicious payloads, such as a backdoor, password stealer, or some other kind of Trojan.

If you have any additional questions or concerns please contact our helpdesk at helpdesk@uvi.edu or call us 1466.


Cherie Wheatley
Office of the CIO
Manager,Technology Customer Service