A new Virus is in town, it’s name is “searchmeup” and it is the first virus to make use of the image loading buffer overrun flaw found in Windows late last year. If your PC is unpatched for that exploit, you can be infected simply by visiting an affected website in Internet Explorer and loading a suspect image. You can also get infected by viewing a HTML email in Outlook and Outlook Express. The Virus can also download a Trojan horse or other malicious program onto your PC. Panda Software has written about the Virus and advises everyone to keep their anti-virus up to date, it’s also a good idea to ensure your Windows PC is fully patched. If you don’t have an up to date anti-virus application, head over to tips.littlehosting.com and grab yourself a free one. This virus affects Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT/Me/98. Mac and Linux are as usual, unaffected. Users of Firefox/Thunderbird are likewise unaffected. If your homepage in Internet Explorer suddenly changes, you should immediately run a Virus scan with an up to date scanner.
