Newindpress

Bangalore, May 29: The browser war between Internet Explorer (IE) and Mozilla has taken a new turn with a new Virus pitching in to help IE. The W32.USBWorm known popularly as the 'I Hate Mozilla Virus' prevents users from opening Mozilla and also prevents them from accessing sites like Orkut and Youtube.

Everytime the user opens Mozilla, the Virus pops up with a message, "Use IE, You Dope. I don't hate Mozilla but use IE or else...." and closes the browser window. When the user tries to get into Orkut or Youtube again the villainous pop-up splash the message, ‘Orkut is banned, Orkut is banned you fool.

"The administrators didn't write this program guess who did?" and it plays a sound, supposedly a devil's laugh. The worm then closes the web page window.

While this might seem funny, some of the users who are addicted to Mozilla and Orkut find it really frustrating. Some of them had to format their entire hard-disk while others used Windows XP's System Restore utility to terminate the virus.

Unfortunately, none of the anti virus programmes including Nortan, McAfee and AVG has been able to detect the Virus.

The worm spreads via thumbdrives, data cards and storage discs, using the computer's Autorun feature.

The best precaution is to avoid transferring data from internet centres using flash drives.

Simple Solution to remove the Virus

- Open Task Manager by holding Ctrl + Alt + Del and click on the process tab.

- Ignore the warning messages and stop the SVC.Host for the system's user name.

- Navigate to C:/Heap41a and delete the contents of the folder. Smile.