• Worm scares Internet users - The Hindu, March 3, 2001
• "Chernboyle" virus may hit tomorrow - The Hindu, April 25, 2001
• Anna virus spreading - The Hindu, Feb 15, 2001
• New Computer Virus Threat - The Hindu, Dec 22, 2000
• Another virus threatens Internet - The Hindu, Dec 05, 2000
• New worm prevents access to anti-virus sites - The Hindu, Sep 28, 2000
• Virus Marker-O Strikes - The Hindu, July 29, 2000
• A Solution to tackle virus attacks - The Hindu, June 23, 2000
• Alert Sounded for Internet bug - The Hindu, May 28, 2000
• Beware the worm - The Hindu, May 13, 2000
• Solution to combat Internet worm - The Hindu, May 13, 2000
• CIH virus to hit today - The Hindu, April 25, 2000
• Chennai firm offers solution to virus - The Hindu, June 13, 1999
• CIH to hit again - Express Computer, May 12, 1999
• Dangerous Computer Virus - The Hindu, April 24, 1999
• Melissa plays havoc, Prognet Fires solvo - DQ Week,April 3,1999
• Melissa Virus attacking computers - The Hindu, March 30, 1999

Worm scares Internet users - The Hindu, March 3, 2001

                     A Worm that spreads through the Internet using Outlook and Outlook Express, infected several computers last night, throwing a scare among users including those in the city.

                     The Wscript/Kak worm affects those using Internet Explorer 5 and Outlook/Outlook Express. When viewing the mail in these e-mail clients, the VBScript code in it creates "KAK.HTA" in the startup directory.

                     The city-based anti-virus software maker, Prognet Technologies, says that when running startup next time, it will create" KAK.HTA" in the Windows folder and change the MS Outlook Express registry setting automatically copying itself to every outgoing message as a signature. It keeps spreading through this mode. The worm comes in different variants and each attacks on the different date and in a different style, displaying a few windows confusing and scaring the users. A system shutdown is caused by one variant of the worm, which struck last night timed for March1.

                     After cleaning the worm, the user should download a patch file from the Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS99-032) to avoid further attacks, says the Prognet Managing Director, Mr. Stanley Rakesh.

                     A free utility to detect and clean the virus has been made clean the virus has been made available at www.fireantivirus.com.

"Chernboyle" virus may hit tomorrow - The Hindu, April 25, 2001

                     The "Chernobyle" or CIH virus, which ruined motherboards during each past strike, could hit computer users again on April26, anti-virus software makers have said. The virus could be dormant in computers, and get activated on April 26, damaging both the motherboard and the hard disk, city-based Fire Antivirus said ktoday.

                     A solution to detect and clean the virus is available free at www.fireantivirus.com according to Mr. Stanley Rakesh, managing director of the company.In the wake of a CIH strike, some motherboards could be revived by replacing the BIOS chip is soldered to it.

                     In another scenario, if the Flash BIOS is write protected by jumper, the CIH virus deletes all data stored on the hard disk, which practically puts every computer User at risk.

                     Over the past couple of days, 1,800 users have downloaded the clean-up utility from Fire, the company said. CIH is rated as the most dangerous virus globally, as it is the only one targeting hard ware, and its author landed behind bars.

Anna virus spreading - The Hindu, Feb 15, 2001

                     An alert has been sounded for "Annakournikova.jpg.vbs", an internet virus that enters computers as an e-mail attachment and mass mails itself using the recipient's address book.

                     Although it does not destroy the files on the recipient's computer the pattern of its spread threatens e-mail servers through sheer overload.

                     The encrypted VB script worm uses Microsoft outlook to spread and its message boy is "Hi:check This!", according to Prognet Technologies, and anti-virus software company which has posted a free solution to it at its website, www.fireav.com.

                     The VBS extension would not appear if Windows Scripting Host is installed, in which case it appears as a jbg file. On opening the attachment, however, the virus copies to windows system folder.

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New Computer Virus Threat - The Hindu, Dec 22, 2000

                     Computer virus expert have warned about a new virus that will get activated on -December 25 and damage the mother-board and hard-disk. Called "Win32/Kriz", this "portable executable", virus will infect the .EXE files under Win9x and WinNT 4.0 platforms. At present five known versions of Kriz have been reported.

                     The virus directly attacks the code stored in the flash ROM chip and makes the computer unbootable, says Mr. Stanley Rakesh of Prognet Technologies, which makes Fire Antivirus. A free solution could be downloaded to detect and clean the virus at www.fireantivirus.com.

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Another virus threatens Internet - The Hindu, Dec 05, 2000

                     An internet virus, Prolin, working as a worm poses a serious threat to internet users, with capability of copying all e-mail ids in the affected person's MicrosoftOutlook address book, automatically sending itself to these addresses and renaming files On the hard disk.

                     Outlining the worm's potential for harm, anti-virus maker Prognet Technologies said today that it had posted a solution to detect and clean the virus at its site, www.fireantivirus.com. The Prolin virus written in Visual Basic 6, comes as an attachment file, with the subject " A great Shockwave Flash Movie" and the body stating "Check out this new Flash movie that I downloaded just now… its great" and an attachment "Creative. Exe".

                     The virus searches for files with extension.zip; .mp3 and .jpg, renaming , them with an additional extension and moving them to the root directory. It also creates a file named c:\messageforu.txt in the rood directory, signed by "The Penguin", with text that warns the recipient that "this a warning…I could have completely wiped out your har disk", and challenging the affected person tko reverse the process. As a conclusion, the virus sends a notification message to the virus author , with the subject, "Job Complete", and the message, "Got Yet Another Idiot".

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New worm prevents access to anti-virus sites - The Hindu, Sep 28, 2000

                     A complex computer virus name MTX threatens to spread fast via email and prevents the affected user from accessing prominent anti-virus sites on the internet. The virus, with three components, a virus, worm and a backdoor, enters the machine as a attachment with one of 32 names, but has a blank message body and subject line in the e-mail, Prognet Technologies, which provides free detection of the virus at its website, www.fireantivirus.com, said.

                     The worm monitors all the Internet sites that the user visits and the e-mails sent. It attaches itself to all the outgoing emails, and restricts the usage pattern. The backdoor stays active and downloads dangerous files from the specific virus group site. When activated in Windows it affects files with .exe and .dll extensions. The use of Entry point obscuring technology by the virus makes it difficult to solve.

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Virus Marker-O Strikes - The Hindu, July 29, 2000

                     A virus gets activated by opening a word document has affected several computers across the country. Though it does not destroy files on memory chips, it slows down machine speed while opening and closing documents.

                     Called W97/Marker - O the new virus is a modified version of W97M/Marker virus. If a computer is infected, the virus checks for system date while opening word document. If the month is greater than seven and the day is greater or equal to 23, then it will display the message " did you wish Shankar on his birthday?" The user is given the option of saying "yes or no". While closing the document a caption says, "happy birthday Shankar on his birthday?" If the "yes" option selected its says. "Thank you! I love you. You are wonderful." If the "no option is selected It displays, " You are heartless. You will be punished for this."

                     According to Mr. Stanley Rakesh of Prognet Technologies, which makes Fire Anti-virus programmes, the virus will display its payload from July 23, to July 31. A programme to detect the virus could be downloaded free of cost from www.fireantivirus.com.

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A Solution to tackle virus attacks - The Hindu, June 23, 2000

                     Internet users threatened by a new virus, VBS. Stages, which spread through email, Mirc, pirch and ICQ, have been offered a free solution.

                     The Virus which is in fact a fast spreading internet worm capable of overloading mail servers, picks up addresses from the address book of MS Outlook and sends mail randomly.

                     The subject line will be either "Fw" or "Life stages" or "Funny" or combination of these says Mr. Stanley Rakesh, of Prognet Technologies, markers of "fire antivirus" software.

                     According to him, the body of the mail will be " The male and female stages of life" and the attachment will be LIFE-STAGES.TXT.SHS. The worm is disguised because the.shs extension is invisible and the user is made to believe that it is a harmless text file.

                     It spreads to all available mapped drives with random names. The worm also modifies the registry and generates a copy in the recycle bin. Prognet has offered a solution for the virus which can be downloaded free from www.fireantivirus.com.

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Alert Sounded for Internet bug - The Hindu, May 28, 2000

                     An alert has been sounded for an internet bug, W97M/ Resume, that enters computers through email and deletes all files in the user's mapped drives.

                     Appearing as harmless"Resume". In the mail from "Janet Simons". The internet worm targets users of Microsoft's Outlook email client. The attachment with the mail, once opened, will do the damage by sending email to all entries in the available address books and executing the file deletions later.

                     Once the programme is closed, it deletes all the files in the mapped drives nad the following directories: C:\My documents\**
C:\WINDOWS\**
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\**
C:\WINNT\**"
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\*.* says Prognet Technologies, which has put up a free solution to the worm at its site www.fireantivirus.com.
This variant of "Melissa" bears the subject Resume-Janet Simons and has the attachment: Explorer.doc or Resume1.doc or Normal.doc.
Prognet said users of its Fire anti-virus are protected as its automatically detects the worm in the name W97m.melissa variant.

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Beware the worm - The Hindu, May 13, 2000

                     Mother's Day is not all about love and caring of cyberspace , there are malevolent programmers working to leave some computers users with devastating after effects. Their gift for Mother's Day is an Internet worm that goes by the same name, as a variant of VBS/Love letter. Beware the worm today.

                     What looks like a news of a warm and glowing gift in E-mail message actually wrenks havoc on picture files on the computer and unleashes a Trojan, to steal password
Says Mr. Stanley Rakesh of Prognet Technologies, which makes Fire Antivirus. The worm opens MS outlook Address Book and sends e-mail to all addresses contained in it, causing heavy traffic and crash of servers as well.

                     The E-mail arrives with the subject:Mothers Day order confirmation the body as amessage to the effect that the credit card of the recipient has been charged for a particular amount for the mother's day diamond special".

                     The mail further states that a "detailed invoice", has been attached to the mail, which should be printed out and kept in a safe place. The body contains attached the email address mothersday@subdimension.com. The deadly crgo, of course, is the attachment mothersday.vbs.

                     But doomsday can yet be averted, with a visit to the site www.fireantivirus.com which provides a free utility to detect and clean this virus, and appropriate antivirus software.

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Solution to combat Internet worm - The Hindu, May 13, 2000

                     A solution for the new internet worm, south park, has been offered by an antivirus company here free. It will help detect and clean the infection which appears as an e-mail with the subject "subject Alter!"

                     Fire Antivirus from Prognet Technologies has hosted the solution to the worm at its website www.fireantivirus.com which could be downloaded without charge.

                     The bug which uses Microsoft Outlook and copies a .exe. files to floppy and mapped drives to spread, is 19,968 bytes long and is written in Visual Basic the e-mail attachment is name"south park.exe". says a press release from Prognet Technologies.

                     The major impact of the worm is that it creates a "swapfile.vxd, in the windows directory and fils the entire hard disk with garbage. Windows then shows that hard disk is full as an alert message. It also creates an autoexec file on floppies to spread the damage.

                     The technical team of the company says the worm has a dormant attacking capability and could activate in different forms. More details of the worm would be updated soon.

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CIH virus to hit today - The Hindu, April 25, 2000

                     Those who thought about the havoc wreaked by CIH computer virus in flashback terms, please fast forward to April 26, There is little time left before the computer is licked clean by the virus again.

                     The CIH virus, which affected about 4000 computers in Chennai alone, might be staging a comeback today. According to Mr. Stanley Rakesh of Prognet Technologies , a virus company which is cruising the Net with an electronic microscope looking for the non-living danger. CIH will activiate its "payload" again today.

                     This could damage the motherboard and the hardisk, according to Mr. Rakesh there are 15 known versions of the virus and one of them hits computers on April 26, The virus made its maiden, but destructive appearance on this day last year.

                     For those without fool proof antivirus protection in their computers its is safer "to boot the system with a clean bootable floppy disk, then check for the virus before booting through hard disk says Mr. Rakesh. Those who are unsure should not touch the computer on 'Wednesday. A free solution to the virus can be downloaded from www.fireantivirus.com

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Chennai firm offers solution to virus - The Hindu, June 13, 1999

                     A Chennai based anti-virus company has offered a solution to prevent computers from being hit by the latest threat, the e-mail worm, ExploreZip. Computer users can download the protection free from the Internet site www.fireantivirus.com, said the Prognet Technologies in a press release today.

                     ExploreZip uses standard e-mail software such as Outlook Express and Exchange hits Windows 95, 98 and NT systems. Files affected by the worm are reduced to zero byte, and data is thus non-recoverable.

                     The worm comes as an attachment, "zipped-files.exe" and when executed, copies itself to the Windows system registry to damage targeted files.

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CIH to hit again - Express Computer, May 12, 1999

                     A more dangerous and deadly virus called "CIH" has damaged the motherboards and hard disk of many computers (on 26th of April 1999) and is all set to activate again on June 26. The CIH virus is spread through disguised download via Internet.

                     At present, there are four known versions of CIH virus, which destroys motherboards and or hard disks. The first and second versions had already dropped its payload on April 26. The third version will strike on 26th of June and the fourth version on the 26th of every month. While the first three versions are aggressive and long-lived, the fourth version is to stay for a very short time.

                     The computer motherboards manufactured in the last few years store their BIOS on a flash ROM chip which are rewritable. The CIH virus directly attacks the code stored in the flash ROM chip and makes your computer unbootable.

case 1: In certain motherboards, the BIOS chips are replaceable and the solution is possible by inserting a new chip.

case 2: However, in most cases the BIOS chip is soldered to the motherboard and there is no solution except to replace the motherboard, which could be cost-effective.

case 3: If the flash BIOS is write-protected by jumper set then the CIH virus will delete all the data stored in hard disk which puts every computer at risk irrespective of the BIOS LAYOUT.

                     The CIH virus that affected motherboards and hard disks amounts to 80 percent, and the remaining 20 percent attacked the hard disks alone, during the April 26th hit. Chennai-based Prognet Technologies, provider of anti-virus solutions, is offering a free solution for this virus which is available at www.fireantivirus.com.

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Dangerous Computer Virus - The Hindu, April 24, 1999

                     Mr. Stanley Rakesh, writes on behalf of Prognet Technologies, Chennai. A virus more dangerous and deadly than the melissa virus, and called "CIH" has spread rapidly and remains dormant in many computers. This virus will wake up or get activated on April 26 and it will damage the motherboard and the hard disk.

                     case 1: In certain motherboard the BIOS chip are replaceable and solution is possible by inserting a new chip. case 2: In most cases the BIOS chip is soldered to the motherboard and there is no solution except to replace the motherboard. case 3: If the flash BIOS is write-protected by jumper set then the CIH virus will delete all the data stored on hard disk which puts every computer at risk irrespective of the BIOS layout.

                     At present there are four known versions of CIH virus which destroys your motherboard or hard disk. The first and second version will drop its payload on April 26. The third version strikes on June 26 and the fourth version on the 26th of every month. In the interest of the public we are providing a free solution for this virus at www.fireantivirus.com.

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Melissa plays havoc, Prognet Fires solvo - The DQ Week, April 3, 1999

                     Melissa the new e-mail virus, which has been widely talked in the media few days ago will soon fade out (atleast in Chennai) like other viruses, which has got attention only for a short span of time. The Chennai based company, Prognet Technologies have discovered a software to attack this virus and this being offered free to all.

                     How does it work? The virus sends, on behalf of the recipient, a similar e-mail with subject body-text and attachment to the first 50 addresses in the Address Book option of Outlook Express.

                     Similar to other word macro virus. With the normal.dot infected, it infects any word document that is opened thereafter. The virus displays the following text in the active document when the 'date' is equal to the minute. eg April 16th at 10:16 am.

                     To offer a solution to Prognet Technologies has released a public domain cure for the same. This is available form their web site www.fireantivirus.com. This virus creates and Outlook object using Visual Basic instruction and reads the list of members from the address book. It sends e-mail to the first 50 recipients in the list only if Outlook is present and not through any other mail client.

                     Usually, such viruses attack individual machines, but this one apparently can overload mail services by sending out repeated messages, especially in a large network. People cannot get the virus by merely opening up a message, but only by opening up a message, but only opening the attached document. Hence, users should be careful of anything that arrives by e-mail, especially from unfamiliar people. The virus also appears to turn off Office's macro protection, which could leave users more vulnerable to future viruses. After cleansing their machines of the virus, those affected might need to reactivate the macro protection.

                     Like this, there are other viruses which, can affect the PC and the network too. For instance and email titled- it takes Guts to say 'Jesus'- when opened, it will erase everything on your hard disk. This is a new virus which is very malicious and not many know about this.

                     There is one more virus which says 'Returned or unable to deliver'. This will attach itself to your computer components and render them useless. According to an AOL press release, this is a very dangerous virus and there is no remedy for it at time. Also there are other virus like list1.doc which is also quite dangerous and harmful.

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Melissa Virus attacking computers - The Hindu, March 30, 1999

Mr. Stanley Rakesh, Prognet Technologies, Chennai, writes:

                     We introduce ourselves as a software company providing IT solutions. We have developed an anti-virus software called "fire anti-virus kit" which provides solution for all kinds of virus name "Melissa". We are the first to provide a solution for this Virus in India. It is freely available at www.fireantivirus.com

Virus Name: Melissa virus.

Type of virus: Microsoft word macro Virus: Infects: MS word 97and Office 2000 documents:

Details:

                     This virus grabs the first 50 addresses from the address book of Microsoft Outlook Express and resends the mail. The infected word document contains the porno site address. In word 97, the virus disables the Tools /macro menu commands, the confirm conversions option, the MS word macro virus protection, and the save normal template prompt. The virus then checks to see if the registry key "HKEY- CURRENT-USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Melisa?" contains the value"...by Kwyibo." This is how the virus determines whether it has activated on this system. The virus then opens outlook, if present on the system, and sends one email for each address list. The email may contain up to 50 recipients.

                     The email will contain the subject line: "Important Message from (user name)" and the message body will be "Here is that document you asked for ... don't show anyone else:-)" The virus then attaches a copy of the infected attachment to the outgoing mail. The name of the original infected attachment was List.doc, but it could by any name, If the user does not have the outlook, the virus will not work. Then the virus modifies the value of the registry key mentioned above as it is equal to"..by kwijibo" indicating that it has successfully activated on this computer. After that, the virus checks to see if the normal template and active document infected and if either is not. It infects the file. Finally, if the day of the month is equal to the minute (for example. if is march 26 at 3.26 p.m.), the virus will type the following text on active document: " Twenty-two points plus triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Game's over. I'm outta here."

                     visit web site www.fireantivirus.com for more details. A free download is available to detect and clean this virus.