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The viruses are known as "HomePage", "VBS.Hard.A", and "Mawanella", said the company.
The three viruses are similar in that they are VBS-script mass e-mailing worms that can be easily detected by blocking executable e-mail attachments.
The most recent of the viruses, "Mawanella", simply displays a text box in which the recipient is invited to forward the communication to everyone else, said Dermot Williams, managing director of Systemhouse. The invitation is only extended if the user does not have Outlook, through which the worm can spread on its own accord.
The "Mawanella" worm was initially rated as a "level 3" by Symantec, but has since been upgraded to a "level 4", said Williams. He added that as with many worms of this nature, its spread has quickly been halted as information about it has been deployed.
While virus designers have developed ingenious ways for distributing their creations, the VBS.Hard.A is particularly devious. It travels through an e-mailed message titled "FW: Symantec Anti-Virus Warning," and claims to contain a description of a non-existent worm in an attached file.
When the file attached to the e-mail, www.symantec.com.vbs, is activated it changes the Microsoft Internet Explorer home page to a fake Web page, warning against a non-existent worm called VBS.AmericanHistoryX_II@mm. It also causes Outlook to send copies of the fake virus warning to all users in the address book.
Furthermore infected computers will display the enigmatic message, "Don't look surprised! It is only a warning about your stupidity. Take care!" every 24 November.
"Viruses are a double-edged sword," explained Williams. "The worm (which is a type of virus) propagates itself and can have literally any payload at all. This could be to point the user to a pornographic site or to simply change the colour of the screensaver wallpaper."
When someone receives an e-mail, a virus will generally only spread if the attachment is opened, he said. In addition, a virus will often come from someone known to the user. S
Some viruses try to work by embedding themselves within HTML, which means that they can spread without any attachment. However, these types of virus do less damage.
"It is disturbingly simple to construct a virus," said Williams. Consequently, he would not comment on how they are made.
However, the established profile of people who construct viruses is males in their late teens, he added. Generally, such people constructed viruses out of a misguided sense of peer group recognition.
Today's viruses posed a new threat by being able to spread more quickly, said Williams. For example, the "Melissa" virus that started in March 1999 spread worldwide within 16 hours, which was the fastest that a virus has ever spread.
The "Melissa" virus was also noteworthy as the first of the mass e-mail viruses, he added
Other well-known viruses include "Love Letter" in 2000, which used a very simple means of encouraging people to open the attachment.
A more recent virus was "Kournikova" (named after the tennis player), which did not do anything particularly exciting other than trick people into opening the attachment, said Williams.
Today's viruses are ranked according to a scale, he explained. A "Trojan" will do something behind the scenes in addition to what it is officially supposed to do; a "virus" is a "Trojan" that replicates itself; and a "worm" is able to spread itself more than a virus.
Systemhouse is at www.systemhouse.com
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