First console game ever to ship with virus, says Sophos
Anti-Virus
Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, has
learnt that the Japanese-language version of Atelier Marie, a
role-playing game for the Sega Dreamcast games console, is infected
with a destructive computer virus. The game includes a screensaver
that, once installed, attempts to infect the user's PC with the
highly damaging W32/Kriz virus.
"Kriz is capable of rendering a computer useless," said Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos Anti-Virus. "It
executes its payload on December 25th, which will mean a pretty
miserable Christmas for anyone receiving this in their stocking.
Although the Dreamcast itself is left unscathed anyone loading the
screensaver onto their PC will be in for an unpleasant surprise.
It's almost unbelievable that two years after this virus was first
seen it is still doing the rounds."
Kool Kizz, the Japanese developers of Atelier Marie, have
recalled the game from shop shelves and posted an apology to
affected users on their website at www.koolkizz.co.jp. Although the
infected version of the game is only likely to have been widely
distributed in Japan, Sophos is advising anyone who has a copy to
either return or destroy it.
Kriz will erase the CMOS setup and attempt to corrupt a
computer's BIOS chip in a similar way to the CIH (aka Chernobyl) virus.
This effectively paralyses the entire computer, making it unusable
and forcing the user to replace the entire chip.
The virus also attempts to overwrite all files on local hard
disks and network drives with garbage.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.