(IDG) -- The holes in Web software just keep getting bigger, opening your PC to ever more imaginative viruses. E-mail attachments are the trapdoors for viruses to drop in on your PC, and early reports suggest that the latest security breach (infestation by viruses in mail attachments with extra-long file names) could leave users of Microsoft and Netscape Communications e-mail programs vulnerable.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE

IDG.net home page

PC World home page

FileWorld find free software fast

Make your PC work harder with these tips

Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net

IDG.net's desktop PC page
IDG.net's portable PC page

IDG.net's Windows software page

IDG.net's personal news page

Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you

Subscribe to IDG.net's free daily newsletter computer geniuses (& dummies too)

Search IDG.net in 12 languages

News Radio

PC World News Radio

Computerworld Minute audio news for managers

Microsoft has posted a patch on its site (see "Outlook Patch" link below), but at this writing, Netscape had not yet issued a patch for Navigator and Communicator e-mail clients.

Meanwhile, executives at CyberMedia claim that their Guard Dog Deluxe software can protect you against these and viruses not yet born. Like many other commercial programs, Guard Dog contains an antivirus component that searches for known signatures of malicious code, which it stops and cleans out. But viruses are breeding at such a rate and Web-based e-mail security (or the lack thereof) is in such a state, maintains Cybermedia Group Product Manager Tim Petras, that this traditional approach leaves a lapse between the time a security breach or viral outbreak is discovered and the time a solution is worked out. A more omniscient approach to security is needed, says Petras.

Cybermedia's Guard Dog halts any suspicious activity on your PC and alerts you with a bark. Guard Dog will recognize and interrupt an unauthorized request by a long-file-name virus or even by legitimate applications that sometimes misbehave, says Product Designer Edgar Tu.

Typically, viral e-mail attachments--which are nothing more than small programs--are dangerous only when launched. But according to Microsoft and Netscape security notices, a user could be fooled into inadvertently launching a long-file-name virus. In Navigator or Communicator, it's as simple as selecting the File menu.

But "nothing can be instigated by itself," says Tu, who insists that Guard Dog would recognize a program launch, however it is disguised. Still, since a long-file-name virus has not yet been spotted in the wild, Tu's firm hasn't yet had an opportunity to test his conviction in the lab. Hopefully, the current security breach will be closed before that is necessary.

But even if we survive this crisis, it makes you wonder: What will be the next hole in the screen door between your PC and the Web?