Secured Computers

The virus, dubbed as "Bubbleboy," has entered into open internet indicatng a high potential for futureinfections.The virus strikes a Seinfeld theme, changingthe victim's computer's registered owner to "Bubbleboy," a reference toan episode of the former popular TV show. There are other references to the show in the program: Users' company information is changed to"Vandelay Industries," and "Soup Nazi" also appears in the source code. It appears in mailboxes with a subject line "Bubbleboy is back" researchers said. The virus marks a dangerous step forward in the trend of using email toattack remote computers, researchers say. As with several earlier
similar fast spreading viruses,it takes advantage of security holes in Microsoft Outlook email
software to run an unauthorized program on victims' computers, changinginformation and emailing itself to new targets. Those viruses need a user to click on an email "attachment" in order tobe triggered, however. By contrast, Bubbleboy runs as soon as anOutlook user opens an infected email, or even when an Outlook Expressuser previews a message.

       The new virus requires a user to be running Microsoft's Outlook emailprogram, Windows 95, 98, or 2000, and Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher.It targets a security hole for which Microsoft has already created a fix, but which many users still have yet to use, researchers say. Microsoft did not have a comment on the virus by press time.

Active Surfing is the new way of surfing the world wide web. According to the reviews of major anti virus software companies atleast one website is poisonous amont 1000 websites. So one should be very careful while surfing the internet, otherwise you are always prone to virus attack.
Now a days most of the antivirus softwares provide facilities for active surfing. Some of the majors are AVG, McAfee, Zone Alarm Security and Node 32.
The antivirus softwares keep a database of the websites which they regularly scan for threats. They keep the details of the websites like IP address, last time scan time, current status i.e whether safe to surf or not. Accordingly they provide information of the safety of surfing the internet. AVG names this program as Link Scanner.

Such types of programs are really good to use as we need not to worry while surfing the net. Whatever precaution need to be taken are done by the program, this program will automatically indicates when accessed a poisioned website.