Kata Markon

["David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Harry Staiti,

>>I am concerned that I might have an email virus that is sending out info
to those in my address book. I just received information that my computer
sent out an email to a list serve that I never composed. It contained the
following in the message body:

       This is a  new website
       I hope you would enjoy it.

The returned message that informed me of this email sent out from my
conputer did not have the web site.
1. Did any of you receive this email from my email address?
2. Do any of you know what this virus is and how to remove it?<<

I believe that this message is the production of some new version of a virus
that was poorly written and did not end up fully deploying. Right after the
"bugbear" virus problem peaked, this one also started showing up. As you
probably know, stealing the names of people in address books and sending
messages to "multiple unnamed recipients" through listservers and including
a fake return e-mail host in the address is the latest trick.

This virus appears to be a variant of one that made rounds a year or two
ago, which would plant a command in HTML mark-up code in the message. The
code usually included a command to automatically access a web site set up by
the virus writer and/or to automatically launch a program in an attachment
when the message was opened. This recent version appears to omit the crucial
step of inserting that code, because nothing happens when you open the
message. If it were working, you'd see some dialogue box from your virus
program or browser security settings advising you that something was
happening - usually also asking if you want it to proceed or not.

The chance that it was your computer that carries the virus, especially if
you keep your virus protection program database files up to date, are small.
Your name was chosen at random from an infected computer's address book.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA