FIRST STRIKE OF VIRUS HITS COMPUTERS.

Byline: Tom Abate San Francisco Examiner

If all went well Thursday morning, your personal computer ran just fine. But if you were among the unlucky few, a rare virus spread over the Internet may have erased your hard drive.

The Hare virus, which was timed to do its destructive work Thursday and again Sept. 22, was so named because it displays the message ``Hare Krishna, hare hare'' on computer screens as it erases affected hard drives.

Jimmy Kuo, virus expert with McAfee Inc. of Santa Clara, said the virus could only affect users of Windows-based PCs who had downloaded programs over the last two months from three Internet news groups: alt.sex, alt.cracks or alt.crackers.

``Media coverage has been way overblown,'' Kuo said. ``I expect we're talking about a handful of people affected,'' estimated between 100 to 1,000 worldwide.

McAfee, one of several firms that sells software to scan and protect against viruses, has a Web site (www.mcafee.com) where people can download software at no charge that Kuo said would detect and eliminate the Hare virus before its next eruption Sept. 22.

Charles Renert of Symantec Corp., which also sells virus-protection tools, said his firm has seen a half-dozen copies of the Hare virus since May, when it began appearing in the United States, Europe, Russia and New Zealand.

Renert said no one knows why the virus used the Hare Krishna chant, or the significance of the two dates, Aug. 22 and Sept. 22.

Viruses spread when people share disks with infected files or download such programs off the Internet.