Beware! Beebone PC virus on the prowl

 A new and deadly variant of computer virus called 'Beebone' has been detected in Indian cyberspace and internet security sleuths have warned users to safeguard their systems against its attack which leads to unauthorised entry of malware. 

'Beebone' belongs to the notorious family ofTrojan malwares which get a "privileged access" into a users computer by faking its identity and deploying smart and corrupt techniques to attack vulnerable computers. 

The latest virus detected on the country's internet network is so notorious and lethal that it acquires as many as 20 aliases or masks to infect and attack a vulnerable computer system which is low on security features. 

"It has been observed that new variants of Trojan win32/Beebone are spreading widely. This is a trojan downloader family which silently downloads and installs other malware and programs without user consent," an advisory issued by the national Internet and computer security sleuths organisation, the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In), said. 

The cyber security sleuths have suggested a host of countermeasures and defences to beat 'Beebone' attacks. 

"Exercise caution while using external/removable storage devices, disable autorun functionality in Windows, keep upto date patches and fixes on the operating system and application software, do not visit untrusted websites, keep upto date anti-virus and anti-spyware signatures at desktop and gateway level, use strong passwords and also enable password policies and avoid downloading pirated software," are some of the security features recommended by the agency to Internet and computer users in the country. 

For computer technology geeks, the agency has put out the names of aliases acquired by the virus. 

Some of them are-- Trojan.Win32.Jorik.Fareit.qru (Kaspersky), W32/Autorun.worm.aaeh!gen (McAfee), W32/VobFus-BX (Sophos), Trojan horse ( Symantec), Trojan-FBZZ! 41E0B7088DD9 (McAfee), Trojan.Win32.SelfDel.aqhh (Kaspersky), Trojan.Win32.Jorik.Fareit.qsl (Kaspersky), Beebone-FMQ! 039FA2520D97 (McAfee), W32.Changeup! gen40 (Symantec) and Worm.Win32.Vobfus.dxpf (Kaspersky).