New Virus Alert - All should read...

[computerworks]

There is a new virus (discovered 9/18) that is rapidly spreading.

One of the reasons for the rapid diffusion (and the reason I am posting this alert here) is that this worm uses a variety of new and clever ways to get into your system.

The worm can arrive as an email attachment. The subject, body, and From: address of the email may vary. Some examples claim to be patches for Microsoft Internet Explorer, or delivery failure notices from qmail.

If you are running MS Internet Explorer 5.0 or 5.5 and haven't kept up with the patches for it, you do not have to open the e-mail to catch the virus!...just previewing it in Outlook or Outlook Express can trip it off.

Furthermore, the worm is additionally spreading through KAZAA and other file sharing programs... a new twist.

Understand that Microsoft DOES NOT send out e-mails with patches or fixes or updates attached. If you receive an e-mail that looks like this, it is the virus:



Delete the message ...the "patch" attached is the virus.

If you have MS Internet Explorer in the Version 5.x family, and you haven't run any updates...go here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tre...n/MS01-020.asp

and download and install the fix that stops malicious code from AUTOMATICALLY executing. (This does not affect MSIE 6.x)

If the virus does get into your system, you will see this window:



If you do see it, DO NOT press a button... either a 'yes' or a 'no' answer will execute the virus installer..... just SHUTDOWN your computer.

If the virus does get into your computer, it will disable all anti-virus software and firewalls from running, and will set up a junk mail server, turning your computer into a spam-machine...sending out infections to everyone you know.

It also hacks up the registry to accomplish these tasks...making repair of the infected computer a rather complicated process.

It will automatically spread though networks and, if you have Kazaa installed, it creates a new, second Shared Folder, making you more 'exposed' for future trojans, without your knowledge.

This is a doozy. We are tooling up this morning for a flood of incoming cals about the virus.

Bottom line...
-Have up-to-date AntiVirus software and keep updating the Virus definitions at the publisher's web site.

-DO NOT 'play' with e-mails that looks suspicious, as described above.

-BE VERY WARY of .zip, .rar, .scr, .com, and .exe files that suddenly appear in your Kazaa folder.

If you need more technical info on this work, check out Symantec for more info.

Be careful out there.