After the e-mails are sent, it’s only a matter of time before someone new downloads the attachment and further spreads the virus, van Stolk-Riley said.

In an attempt to destroy the virus at its source, a students who reports having an infected computer is immediately removed from Harvard’s network.

“They lose network access until they file a reactivation request and update their software,” said Saleh. “Then you’re allowed back on the network if you’re virus free.”

Saleh said that of the 56 people removed yesterday, most were first-years.

But not only comparatively new students were caught off guard when they received these e-mails over the past few days.

Some of the most computer-savvy members of the Harvard community were initially fooled by this new variant, Davis said.

“This is making the folks who know what they’re doing pause and say, ‘Wait, is this real?’” said Davis.

Others instantly assumed that these e-mails were problematic.

“I immediately realized that it was a virus,” said van Stolk-Riley. “There is no Harvard.edu team. There is no policy where any of these people would have sent out an e-mail about this, so I was certain that this wasn’t anything from them.”

In addition to removing infected accounts from the network, Computer Services also posted a warning on its website and notified UAs via House e-mail lists.

Van Stolk-Riley said that while the UAs are making every attempt to prevent the virus from spreading, the nature of Bagle.J makes this task incredibly difficult.

“They are being sent from users outside and inside the network,” said van Stolk-Riley.

Harvard’s policy of not monitoring students’ e-mail also makes catching viruses difficult, although van Stolk-Riley said he thought that privacy was for the best.

Despite how easy it is to be infected, once a student has downloaded the virus, it is relatively easy to fix the problem.

“All you have to do is run Stinger, a McAfee virus program,” said Saleh.