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By Hemesh Patel

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, a computer virus was born, exploiting the sympathies of many who log on to the World Wide Web.

Those affected by W32/Vote, the computer virus, were lured into opening the e-mail because the message indicated they would be invited to a voting forum concerning the terrorist attacks.

Instead, the virus, hidden in an e-mail attachment, activated a worm – an infectious computer program that makes copies of itself – which contained instructions to delete all files in the Windows directory, according to McAfee.com, a virus scan company.

According to the McAfee.com Web site, 11 strains of the virus have been discovered between Sept. 24 and 27.

Computers at UCLA are not at a great risk for being infected with this virus because many campus computers have an anti-virus program that scans e-mails for bugs. But people who do not check their e-mails for viruses before opening them are at risk of having W32/Vote infect their computer.

“It didn’t spread so widely because this virus is not vastly distributed,” said Shinn Wu, a programmer for the social sciences computer lab.

After infection, a message appears with the text, “I promiss We WiLL Rule The World Again...By The Way, You Are Captured By ZaCker !!!”

The worm then sends itself to all e-mail addresses listed in the Microsoft Outlook address book.

Those with the virus are also at risk of having their hard drive reformatted. Additionally, the worm can delete all anti-virus software.

While UCLA may seem clear of the vote worm, another virus began to infect computers at the Medical Center last week.

“The Nimda virus is still haunting campus entities,” said Mike Panta, operations manager of the School of Medicine Information Technology Services.

The high-risk virus spreads itself through mass e-mails and network sharing and crashes the computer.

“This virus took a half an hour to 45 minutes to get around the world, compared to older viruses that took seven hours,” Panta said.