Many ISU students got more than a good deal from AmesMall.com, an e-mail coupon service.

AmesMall e-mails became infected with the Hybris Virus and sent it to students who receive the weekly e-mail.

“Someone purposely affected our server with a virus and sent out e-mails using our address list,” said Kevin Buck, AmesMall business partner.

The virus was first noticed Saturday afternoon by an employee of Iowa State’s Academic Information Technologies, who then contacted the System Support Service, said Frank Poduska, system analyst for AIT.

“We put a block against the server the mail was coming from,” he said. “We will keep the block up until [AmesMall] convinces us it’s all cleared up.”

Poduska said although viruses crop up all the time, this virus is unusual because it affected such a large number of people.

“AmesMall purchased a list of student e-mails from the Registrar’s Office, and the virus attached to the e-mails and was sent,” he said. “The Registrar’s Office is required by law to provide the e-mail addresses for a fee because it’s public info.”

Students who don’t want their e-mail address distributed can sign a form in the Registrar’s Office to keep them from being published in the ISU directory and from being sold, said Assistant Registrar Judy Minnick.

“When we sell students’ e-mail addresses, we have the buyer sign an agreement to either allow the option for students to subscribe or unsubscribe to the e-mails, and they agree to abide by it,” she said.

Buck said, although many of the people affected were ISU students, anyone who was signed up for the announcements could have been affected.

“The database was shut down before everyone received the list,” he said. “We are trying to find out how someone did this malicious act. We are trying to backtrack to see where the virus came from.”

Although the e-mail portion of AmesMall.com has been shut down, the Web site will be running, and Buck encourages people to visit the site.

“When someone has the Hybris Virus, the person will send an e-mail, and the virus will be in a subsequent message to the same recipient,” said Jeff Balvanz, system analyst for AIT. “None of the things Hybris does is destructive, but because of its design, the author of the virus can add things later [that] will affect anyone with the virus.”

Although the virus doesn’t do anything harmful, it does create a lot of traffic because of all the extra e-mail it creates, Balvanz said.

“It’s a headache, because it may send e-mail to everyone in the address book,” he said. “It’s a medium-risk virus. It’s not the end of the world like others, but it’s a major annoyance.”

Poduska said this is an old virus and will be stopped with current anti-viral software, and he encourages people to keep current anti-viral software on their machine. Students can update their software by visiting www.ait.iastate.edu.