Penn's Information Systems and Computing staff has had its work cut out for them the last few months to reduce the number of e-mail viruses transmitted and received on campus.
The ISC has lowered the percentage of infected e-mails on the PennNet server over the last month, but still urges students to remain vigilant about e-mail security.
The summer of 2003 marked a high tide in terms of computer infection when Welchia and MSBLAST, two destructive viruses, struck individual machines on campus.
Information technology advisers at Penn were able to constrain the viruses to these specific computers, according to a March statement from the ISC.
Last month, the number of infected e-mails received by the Penn server peaked again.
"In early February, the percentage of infected files received was around 1 percent," Information Security Officer Dave Millar said. "Then, for a couple of weeks in the middle of the month, these numbers increased to about 15 to 20 percent. By the end of February, they had tapered off but are at a higher level now -- between 5 and 6 percent."
According to Millar, e-mail viruses have the potential to disrupt an entire network, but in Penn's case, this has not happened.
Eudora e-mail, a division of the Qualcomm information technology corporation, warned its customers that viruses come through several channels, including "chain letter hoaxes, attachments and javascripts in HTML messages."
Attachments, according to the Eudora Web site, are "the easiest way you can get infected." However, they must be actively opened in order to infect a computer.
Many of these viruses use e-mail to replicate and expand.
"Oftentimes, you will wind up having a virus that sends out infected e-mail messages to many of your correspondents," Millar said.
"It basically looks at your address book."
Millar added that spammers use viruses to relay mail in the same manner.
Since the fall, the ISC has been gradually increasing information security on Penn's campus.
Last October, according to the recent ISC statement, e-mail filters were implemented on several of Penn's main domains such as pobox and dolphin.
Filters "aren't a total replacement for anti-virus programs but are a really good supplementary measure," Millar said.
"Stay up to date with anti-virus software, and update your signatures daily," he added. "And don't open any attachments that you don't recognize."
