Hare virus due again Sunday

Hare is a mutating stealth virus that infects COM and EXE files and the Master Boot Record (MBR) on hard disks and floppy disk boot sectors. Some virus watchers say Sunday's activation could be more harmful than the first, which took place on August 22 and had a significant impact on UK users. The virus has had more time in the wild and will be resident on many more systems, they claim.

An unusual feature of Hare is that many infections have occurred by users downloading materials from the Internet rather than from floppy disks. Frequently, the infections have been traced back to sexually explicit sites.

Infected PCs display the message: "HDEuthanasia by Demon Emperor: Hare Krsna, hare, hare" and hard disks are overwritten.

Virus removal kits are available from McAfee, Symantec and Dr Solomon's among others.