| CrossOver Office 1.3.1 released, secures against KLEZ virus |
Nov. 04, 2002
Philadelphia, PA -- (press release excerpt) -- CodeWeavers, Inc. today announced the release of CrossOver Office 1.3.1, featuring a reliable defense for the KLEZ virus that has the potential to infect WINE users. The announcement was made at LISA, a leading industry conference and exposition for IT systems administrators (Booth #721).
Immediately available from the CodeWeavers website, CrossOver Office 1.3.1 includes many enhancements to its currently supported set of Windows applications, as well as support for the recently-released RedHat 8.0, Mandrake 9.0, and SuSE 8.1 Linux distributions. Perhaps most important to end-users, though, is CrossOver's ability to stop KLEZ and other viruses by automatically detecting any .EXE file attempting to run from WINE's /tmp directory, and then notifying the user in time to stop the infection.
CrossOver Office -- CodeWeavers' popular Windows-to-Linux product based on WINE -- ends that potential frustration. Whenever KLEZ attempts to run its .EXE file from the TMP directory, CrossOver Office 1.3.1 spawns a message to the user warning them that they may launching an application that could potentially harm their computer. The new fix protects CrossOver users not only from KLEZ, but also from any virus or worm propagated by means of an executable file attachment.
Said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers founder and CEO. "The emergence of the KLEZ virus is a reminder that no application or environment-even in Linux-is immune from infection. As the leading corporate keeper of The WINE Project, we felt it was important for us to respond quickly to this threat with a reliable fix that protects CrossOver users from KLEZ as well as all attachment-borne viruses."
White noted that this should be seen as yet another indication of the responsiveness of the open-source software community. "The ability to run KLEZ under Wine was first reported on October 23 on www.slashdot.org , and we had a fix within days, even though it required fundamental changes to the CrossOver platform," White says. "That's the sort of turnaround that open-source companies can offer to their customers. We're smaller, we're nimbler, and our livelihood is directly dependent on our ability to serve customer needs, rather than being derived from a monopolistic position. That's an important point to continue making -- real competition in the marketplace benefits consumers."
Even if a user's Linux desktop becomes infected by KLEZ via WINE, CodeWeavers officials say clean-up is easy -- far easier than with Windows OS-based systems. WINE typically establishes a 'false' Windows drive to run Windows applications such as Microsoft Office; the user's work files created by the applications are usually stored elsewhere on the computer's hard drive and are immune to the attack.
In the worst case scenario -- one in which the user was forced to wipe clean the 'false' Windows drive to cleanse the PC -- the process consists of nothing more than erasing the 'false' drive in the Linux file system and then re-installing CrossOver Office. Total time needed to complete the task is generally a few minutes, with no critical files permanently lost.
CodeWeavers is also demonstrating its new CrossOver Office Server Edition 1.0. scheduled for for release on November 19th.
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